pjthompson | Entries tagged with fire

Random quote of the day:

“Fire of all things
is the judge and the ravisher.

—Heraclitus, Fragment 26
(tr. Brooks Haxton)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“In everyone’s life at some time the inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”

—attributed to Albert Schweitzer

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

I was awakened early this morning by my Nest smoke detector (a Google product) malfunctioning. No smoke, no fire, but after I'd turned the damned thing off three times it would no longer allow me to do that. The firemen came to confirm no fire, no smoke, and physically disabled the alarm to shut it the f*** up. They suggested that maybe the batteries were no good, although they’d been changed about 4 months ago when the technician came out to inspect things. I had turned the heat on about an hour before this happened, but it wasn’t the first time I’d used it this fall.

This is also not the first time this has happened, although last time was not nearly as traumatic. That time (about a year ago?) it woke me up at 1:30 a.m. shouting, “ATTENTION!!! THERE’S SMOKE IN THE LIVING ROOM!!! THE ALARM MAY GO OFF!!!”

I jumped out of bed and searched frantically for smoke but found none. The alarm never did go off and reset itself. About 20 minutes later I checked the app and it said something like, “Smoke has dissipated.” I went back to bed but didn’t get back to sleep very soon. The next day I had the company come out and inspect the furnace and alarm system but they could find nothing wrong.

I occasionally will smell smoke from the neighbors’ firepit in my house, but they would hardly have been using it at 1:30 on a weeknight, nor (I suspect) early this morning. There were no fires burning in the area on that occasion, either, although I have smelled them in my house at times (and there’s a fire about 20 miles from here which started yesterday). Ironically, the system has never gone off when I have smelled this smoke. But after that first time when the furnace people found nothing, I called the local fire department’s non-emergency number and explained what happened and asked if they could suggest a next step. They said they could come out when they had a lull period and inspect the house, which they did. They used these detectors that see through walls to check for hot wiring that might cause problems, as well as scanning all the appliances, and found nothing.

I’ve been reading online about problems with Nest. Apparently, what happened to me is not unknown. Sometimes the latest high tech is not a good thing. I’m considering having the whole damned thing yanked out. Of course this would happen when my cash flow ain’t great. That seems to be one of the rules for appliances of all kinds.

Typically, when I complained about this on Twitter, I was contacted shortly thereafter by Made By Google (

madebygoogle) offering help and asking me if I had a 1st generation product (which they’ve admitted elsewhere has problems). I do not have a 1st generation product. So. Make of that what you will.

First World problems, but frustrating nonetheless.

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I may not pause to look at your pics/video of your kids, but I will always pause to look at your pics/videos of your cats and dogs. I do not dislike kids, it's just that I really like cats and dogs.

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Sometimes when I go through the house and realize I've left a whole bunch of lights on I say to myself, "What, are we made of money?" Early programming never dies.

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I have never been, and never will be, the kind of writer who writes 10k in a day. That's probably partly due to me being a pantser, figuring things out as I go, stopping here and there to do spot research. What did workmen wear in the 1940s? What sodas were popular? I don't think I've ever written 10k in one day.

But I've consistently ground out the words every day. An average for me would be between 500-750 words, two to three pages, laying that yellow brick road down every day, and thereby I have completed 7 novels, and working on an 8th. Now and then I may have an effervescent day of 1200 words, or 3k. I think I once did 7500 in one day, but those are rare and precious moments of flow. And I'm okay with that. Slow and steady also gets the job done. This week I passed the 10k mark on my new novel. Feels good.

I write until I don't know what happens anymore, then I stop. Overnight, maybe in my dreams, the story continues and the next day when I come back to my manuscript, I do know what happens next and I go until it stops. That's my magic, and I'm glad to have it back again.

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Sometimes I think it's better to not understand things.

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I love how Jake Tapper characterizes Jordan: "the jacketless Jim Jordan who normally isn't on this committee but was put onto it to be a bulldog." That dog may hunt but he don't never bring back the game.

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Jim Jordan reminds me of a guy who keeps a jar under his desk to urinate in.

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I like big rings and I cannot lie.

Nail polish: Blueprint by ILNP.com. I'd been wearing it for a couple of weeks when this picture was taken, so it was a little the worse for wear.

In 1901, two English ladies—Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain—experienced a timeslip while visiting Versailles, going back for an interlude to the time of Marie Antoinette. They detailed this story in a book called An Adventure. You can read about it here: xenophon.org.uk/adventure.html

If you click on the link, then click on "The Music of An Adventure" you can hear a transcription one of the ladies, Ms. Jourdain, a talented musician, made of a strain of music she heard while "there." Not surprisingly, they received much ridicule from the male establishment of the time, but they clung to their accounts for the rest of their lives. There are inconsistencies in their stories, but other things they reported would have taken a great deal of research on their part to get right. So the account remains controversial even today.

Still, it's a cranking great yarn. And I say, all cranking great yarns should be true, even if they aren't.
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The Getty Fire was still quite a ways from me but it got perilously close to the LA Basin. The LA Basin isn't more important than the other areas that have burned but it's densely packed. If the fires get into the Basin I don't know how they'll stop them. It's something to worry about every time fire gets close to the really crowded areas. Fire departments are stretched so thin right now. They heroically got on top of the Getty fire this time, but we’re still burning, homes are still being lost.

California is a trend leader in many ways. But I would rather not be on the front lines of the devastation caused by global warming. Californians are sharing that with our brethren in hurricane, tornado, and typhoon country. But make no mistake: global warming is coming for us all.
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I changed my alarm sound from the annoying ding ding ding ding ding ding a-ding to the sound of a hooting owl echoing in a forest. It's eerie and wondrous when it drops into the silence of my room.
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Someone was talking about animism the other day and it made me think of Ayahuasca, the visionary drug processed by the Quechua people of the Amazon. It's an arduous process to bring forth the drug, involving many steps, and not at all intuitive. When a Westerner asked the shaman how his people learned to process it he said, "The spirit of the plant told us."
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Trust the road
no matter where it
takes you, how many
forks and crossroads.
Wherever it leads,
in any direction,
is the path you must follow.
*

Looks like the giant Tick fire was started by a guy who was living in junkyard like conditions and decided to cook his lunch outside on the barbecue. In Santana wind conditions. Florida had nothing to do with it.
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I finished the old compilation novel (Beneath a Hollow Moon) and put it in a trunk where it will get moldy or will come back out again and I can make it new. I've started another novel, one I'd written a couple of chapters on a long time ago. In fact, chapter one was the last Editor's Choice I received from the Online Writing Workshop for SFF (OWW) before I left it. Carmina. It's been doing a siren call to me for the last couple of months, and so far the writing's been going well. Except for those two previously written chapters it's completely new writing and that feels really good. Also, a completely different universe from the previous novel, and that also feels good. And the best part? I know the end but have no idea how I’ll get there! I'm stumbling around, but I feel like I've finally come home again.

I'll forever be grateful for the things I learned from OWW, the community I was a part of, and the encouragement I received there. Invaluable.
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It’s a process of letting go:
of youth,
resentments,
of those we love,
of seasons of
grief and joy.
Let them go, let them fly.
Let them find new homes,
or sink away into the earth,
away from my fading heart,
my lightening soul.
Away, now!
*

Random quote of the day:

“When you do something, you should burn yourself completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.”

—Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Laurel and Hardy, Ariana Grande, or the Salvation Army Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“A burnt child loves the fire.”

—Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

“A burnt child loves the fire.”

—Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

1. It’s busy season at work. The good news is, we were voted one of the best places to work in L.A. Some who work here are dubious, but most of those people have never worked in the private sector and don’t realize how bad things can get.

2. Last Saturday my friends and I prepared a picnic dinner and drove off to San Pedro to see Shakespeare in the park. None of us had checked the website for months. The venue had been changed because the city wanted to host “The Taste of San Pedro” in that particular park. We drove home, built a fire in my fire pit, and ate our picnic in the backyard. It actually turned out to be quite a pleasant evening. Once we learned to never build a fire with paper and green kindling and turned on the fan to blow the smoke away from the picnic table and us. “Hey, it’s Shakespeare for Dummies!” I said. I smelt smoke for days afterwards.

3. Maybe I should write erotica full time. Then again, it’s so boring.

4. Min has taken to sleeping on the pillow next to me. I turn over in the night and get a faceful of cat and an indignant “Meow!” So of course I turn over on the other side so as not to crowd her.

5. I got really good results on my last blood test so I’ve spent the entire week doing all the things I had to give up in order to improve my blood test. Penance will begin on Monday. But first there will be ice cream!

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Random quote of the day:

"Yesterday is ashes; tomorrow is wood. Only today does the fire burn brightly."

—Inuit proverb, as quoted by Charles de Lint

( Illustrated version. )

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

The stuff of nightmares, but I am fairly insulated from the sweep of the firestorms through Los Angeles County. Nobody is one hundred percent safe living inside the tinderbox Southern California is this time of year (and especially this year), but it would have to be quite extreme for us to get wiped out here in suburbia near LAX. Not impossible. If the winds were right a common house fire could turn into a major conflagration, but we aren't currently experiencing the same winds as the outlying areas. None, in fact, at the moment. But it is hot. SoCal weather has been so schizo lately. Earlier in the week I was wearing fall clothes and getting out my winter blankets. Now the temps are in the 90s.

I actually spent some time at the mobile home park that was wiped out in Sylmar, at the home of a friend's mom. This was many years ago and I've lost touch so I don't know if she was still there. She would be in her 70's or 80's now. I can only hope her home wasn't destroyed, but it was definitely surreal seeing the news reports, and even if the person I knew wasn't still there, many of the people who did live in that park were retired, older people who've just lost everything. I can't help wondering how much FEMA will help them. They didn't own the land their homes sat upon and I can just see some vulture developer sweeping down on the owners and buying up the land. Prime real estate, you know. Mobile homes parks have some protection here, but if everything's destroyed, I wonder if they have any.

Breathing's been okay so far, but we hear fire engines all the time as they call in the resources from all over the city to throw them onto the fire lines. There's a threat of rolling brownouts, too, because one of the main power corridors is along the 5 and 405 freeways which are in the heart of the Sylmar fire. We're generally semi-protected here in Westchester because we're on the same power grid as the airport. They try to keep that up and running no matter what, but you never know. So if you don't hear from me, that's probably why. If this is still ongoing on Monday, it could definitely affect work.

Regardless, we're still conserving energy so as not to drain the power grid unnecessarily.

Current Music: Richard Strauss:4 Last Songs:Im Abendrot - Renée Fleming

I hurt my knee...oh, about a month ago. (More, maybe, but I don't want to think about it.) I've been limping along, thinking it would get better, and it does, but then it gets worse again, then it gets better. Have I gone to the doctor? No, I'm an A-1 doctor-avoider, I am. Very dudelike.

Then Monday we had a fire alarm at work. I work on the third floor. I do not recommend walking down three flights of stairs with a bad knee. (Can't use the elevators in a fire alarm.) It turns out the fire alarm was caused by some asshat smoking a cigar in our smoke-free building, but that's another story.

Yesterday, the knee hurt quite a bit, but I was still hobbling along. This morning, however, when I crossed my leg to tie my shoe, something went ping! and ohmygod. I have to face the thing I've been running from: I need to go to the doctor.

Sitting at a desk is quite uncomfortable, so I left work half day and I can't spend much time at this desk, either, so if I'm not around much in the next few days you'll know why. I go to the doctor tomorrow. Long walk from the parking to the doc's office. That should be fun.

Oh well. It won't kill me, so it will only make me stronger, right? Except maybe my knee, of course.

In the early mornings these days, the light is heavy and gold—really quite beautiful—but it's a sign that the sun is fighting its way through a thick screen of particulates. By the time the sun is fully risen, the sky is a whitish pink wash. Occasionally, patches of clear blue peek through, but as the days and fires progress, that becomes a rarer sight.

This is the time of year in Southern California when I'm glad to be a Flatlander, as those in the hills like to refer to those of us who live inside the basin rather than on its rim or in the canyons further out from the area's cities. I'm not glad in a smug way. In fact, I feel a kind of mild variation on survivor's guilt—normalcy guilt. While everyone in the hill country all the way from Santa Clarita to San Diego is disrupted, some losing everything they have, my life goes on in a fairly routine manner. My experience of the fire is scraping the ash off my car's windshield in the morning so I can see to drive; stinging eyes and scratchy throat; and relatively light traffic—because those normally on the roads are watching out for their houses, or can't get through the fire areas to the basin.

I don't wish to be disrupted or lose everything myself, but my heart goes out to those who are experiencing these things. I appreciate how lucky I am, but I don't take anything for granted. In the early sixties, the entire LA basin almost burned. Fire ravaged through Brentwood, which is on the downward slope of the Santa Monica Mountains and close to the heart of West Los Angeles, adjacent to UCLA. If not for an incredibly courageous and tenacious stand by firefighters, that conflagration would have spread to West LA and across the basin—and nothing short of a miracle could have stopped it. But heroics, and a last minute weather miracle, did save that day. I'm not so foolish to think we might not be so lucky next time.

Firemen are the real deal. That's not a red state issue or a blue state issue, that's the truth. I'm not sure I'd want to have a discussion with someone who didn't recognize how gutsy they are.

Because fire is a fact of life in Southern California. Our environment evolved to take advantage of fire in the way it germinates its vegetation and the conditions are always favorable for flame in the fall. This year is just much worse than usual. I can't remember a time when I didn't get the occasional glimpse of flame peeking over the Santa Monica Mountains, when the smoke didn't choke the air in autumn. Not every autumn is like that, but enough so that it's a permanent part of the psyche of anyone who grew up here.

That and the normalcy guilt.

The Month and a Half From Heck is finally over:

☛ One of the busiest end of the fiscal years I've experienced in awhile
☛ Followed closely by the Meeting From ~~Hell~~ Heck preparation
☛ Painting and furniture moving and re-moving
☛ Another tribe of workmen disrupting the routine of the household (one more tribe to go and then we've exhausted our redecorating resources—and then some)
☛ Some numbskull deciding to push forward with the 2nd draft of her novel during all this, after only about a week off from the 1st draft

There are far worse things that could have happened to me during this time, so it gets a Heck designation rather than Hell, but it did leave me rather exhausted. After the meeting on Tuesday I collapsed in a heap. Oh, I still came into work Weds-Fri, but I wasn't exactly at my best, just dragging through. I gave up trying to write anything some time the week before, am still on vacation from writing (need to refill the well), and I gave myself permission to be a complete vegetable this weekend.

I was looking forward, with the perversity of a true ghost afficionado, to the six hour event Most Haunted Live which went off 9 p.m. Friday night from the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. I'd just had my new DVR box from my cable company installed on Tuesday (with a return visit on Friday since they didn't do it right on Tuesday) and I'd already successfully recorded three episodes of Ghost Hunters, one hour of the medium Lisa Williams, and had the WE Tv line up of supernatural programs on Saturday night to look forward to (Rescue Mediums is a hoot, followed by John Edward). Because it's the time of year it is, there were other ghostly things to be had on Discovery and whatever the hell channel runs Ghostly Encounters (Sundays). (October always brings enough ghostly programming to choke even a devotee like myself.)

So I figured I could at least make it through midnight on the Most Haunted live event (I usually make it at least that late on Fridays), then watch the rest at my leisure, plus have all those other trashy programs to watch when I felt like it. Dudes, I was sound asleep in my chair by about 10:15. I must have been out at least twenty minutes, because on reviewing the Most Haunted recording the next day there's a big chunk in there that I had absolutely no recall of. I decided not to try to make it to 12, went to bed and slept very soundly.

It had been a very long time since I'd completely vegged out on a Saturday—I literally can't remember the last time I did that. But I did last Saturday, and it felt wonderful. I spent hours with the cat on my lap watching ghostly programming until I started to wonder about my psyche and this fascination with seeing dead people. (I still wonder, frankly, and have no solidly convincing answer for myself.) I didn't even read during that time, just sat there gawp-mouthed.

Sunday was more productive, but then I felt more rested. And now L.A. is surrounded by flame, dozens of wildfires, and a thick coating of ash on my car when I went out this morning (and yes, that means we're also breathing that crud). Dead trees, dead houses, a dead church, dead animals, and at least one dead person. We're haunted every year at this time with flame, and heroic firemen make heroic stands to save people and homes. And still we learn nothing from it. And still we rebuild in the same places and push on with our lives.

It makes me wonder about our collective psyches. I have no answers for that, either, that aren't knee-jerk and simplistic.

As illustrated by Edward Gorey in The Blue Aspic.

I know how Jasper feels. My friend and I packed around 40 boxes yesterday, got the worst of it done. There are more horrors to explore, but not the gargantuan horrors of before. I begin to feel less panic.

My repulsion is not much reduced. When I pulled some of the records (yes, I still own some vinyl, retro chick that I am) from their snug hidey hole between the large bookcases I found...creeping horror. I think the records are still okay, but the covers are going to need to be de-mildewed. Can't quite figure out how that happened, as the other small group of records six feet away are just fine.

Maybe the semi-annual flooding of the kitchen? The first batch was closer to the sink, but not close (20 feet?), and the water never seeped that far. I suspect there are all kinds of ickiness lurking in that apartment beneath that carpet. Best not to think about that too much. (TMI, right?) I'm lucky to be leaving.

Truly, I'm at that point. This is a good thing.

To reinforce my loathing of the building, the elevator broke this weekend. Anything that I wanted to move to the car to move to the new place had to be carried up and down the stairs. Needless to say, I didn't move any boxes. My apartment is flush to the gunwales with them now. I have to walk sideways through little burrows carved out in the living room. No earthquakes, please. At least until the big burly moving men come and carry all these boxes away for me.

One good thing: I gathered up all the loose change and quarters hoarded for laundry and put them into wrappers: $52. Hooya. Maybe I can afford the membership for Worldcon after all.

Sigh of the day: One crit on chapter 23 of Night Warrior so far. I got a "1" on characterization because the critter (jumping in at chapter 23 cold) thinks men born in the British Isles would not be able to express their feelings like my main character does and found Caius unlikable and unbelievable. Can't please everyone.

Oy of the day: We just had another fire drill. This time with fire engines. A real Halloween trick. But they gave the all clear after about a half hour, so I guess it wasn't as bad as we feared.

So, I settled into my comfy new chair last night thinking I really was quite tired from a weekend of shopping (which I hate), cleaning, and rearranging furniture and I was really in the mood to just veg with some screen. There was a really bad movie on the SciFi channel, but I was in the mood for some bad sf—you dig? The chair is also in my favorite reading spot, and sometimes I read while I watch TV, or sometimes with the TV off (oh my!), but I wanted veg time.

So an hour into this low-brow wallow my picture tube explodes. Or implodes. Whatever, there was this low poom sound, the picture dissolves to a fist-sized ball of light then goes out completely, but there's this high-pitched whine coming from the TV and the room begins to fill with that burning electrical/burning plastic smell. I immediately unplugged the whole contraption, opened all the windows and doors, brought fans in from the bedroom to blow it away, but I still had to retreat to the bedroom for the rest of the evening. It took hours for that smell to go away and, even so, when I went to bed at midnight, I could smell a residual of it in one corner of the living room. I wonder how many brain cells I lost to this fiasco?

Anyway, the smell's gone this morning, but I have a dead TV sitting in front of my nice comfy chair.

This TV was a Zenith I bought eight years ago. Seems like it should have lasted longer. "Well, dear," my mother says this morning, "they don't make things like they used to." Uh huh. The 20-year-old Zenith up on top of the filing cabinet that I sometimes watch while I'm on the 'puter is still running so I can still watch if I really need to or watch dvds on the 'puter. If I had any dvds. This is not a tragedy, just an irritation.

This year has been the revolt of the machines, starting with my old computer just about this time last year. It's all right, though. They are only things. I know some human beings who are in trouble right now and that's much worse than losing things.

I do so hate to shop, though.

Question of the day: Do you suppose the people at the Style network realized beforehand that their cable abbreviation would be STY? Seems kind of appropriate in a way.

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Page generated Jun. 28th, 2025 09:54 pm

Echoes in a Hollow Space

I'm here because I'm here because I'm here

Entries tagged with fire

Fire

Flame

Musings

Musings

Bonfire

Fire lover

Fire lover

Five things make a Friday

In the forests of the night

Firestorms

Call me Gimpy

Normalcy guilt

Between ghosts and flame

Jasper's records got broken as he was escaping from the asylum

Irony

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June 2025

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