OK, been a month, so we're overdue for an update. I have only just re-hooked up the computer for the first time in almost 2 weeks. Let me relate the circumstances of my last fortnight. FIRE!!! There have been 2 forest fires within 5 km (3 miles) of my home. Yikes!! Started not last, but the Saturday before. I went to Vancouver Island to attend a cousin's wedding. While there someone texted me to see how I was doing. Turns out they'd heard there was a fire in my area. Turns out they were right. Searching castanet.net on my phone - a website for local news, etc for my area - showed an new forest fire in my area. Memories of 2003 (google "okanagan mountain park fire") This fire would start right outside a residential neighborhood, and evacuate about 11,000 people within 24 hours. My place was within 10 city blocks of the edge of said evac area!!
I spent the next day driving home. But as the fire was between me and my home, I had to go a few extra hours out of my way to get home. Time of trip: 13 hours. Not fun. I got home and went through the whole house to pack up anything "irreplaceable". The computer, the cat carrier, documents, 3 cases of wine and 5 cases of beer (about 1/5 and 1/4 of my stash in the basement), my autographed Wayne Gretzky jersey, Dad's jewellery, etc. Anything that would survive the 38C (100+F) temps, went into the trunk right away. Everything else was at "+5 readiness", as the Air Force would say, parked at the front door, ready to be quickly turfed into the car at the first notice of evacuation.
Fortunately, that notice never came. They had the fire contained at 450 ha (200 acres). The other fire was less of a direct threat, started within a few hours of "my" fire and was contained at about the same time, withing about a week. Final toll: 3 houses and 6 other buildings. Totally lucky. It's not really over yet, these things can smolder for months. The 2003 fire mentioned above didn't go completely out, until it started snowing. But it is unlikely to endanger homes again. Whew! All that over last week. My week off!! $%^#$%^!!! I had no plans to be at home. At all. Oh well, C'est la vie...
So an update on my "Life do-over": stage 1 complete - house in order. Stage 2: get my paperwork in order, is well on its way. The fires required me to get 'em gathered, and centralized, so that's done, just gotta organize them, and get them scanned in. Then, grab the old computer and make sure all data is out of it and into the mac. Getting there...
That's all for now. No significant personal stuff. Other than been on a few dates that haven't panned out. But we keep trying.
A la prochaine...
I spent the next day driving home. But as the fire was between me and my home, I had to go a few extra hours out of my way to get home. Time of trip: 13 hours. Not fun. I got home and went through the whole house to pack up anything "irreplaceable". The computer, the cat carrier, documents, 3 cases of wine and 5 cases of beer (about 1/5 and 1/4 of my stash in the basement), my autographed Wayne Gretzky jersey, Dad's jewellery, etc. Anything that would survive the 38C (100+F) temps, went into the trunk right away. Everything else was at "+5 readiness", as the Air Force would say, parked at the front door, ready to be quickly turfed into the car at the first notice of evacuation.
Fortunately, that notice never came. They had the fire contained at 450 ha (200 acres). The other fire was less of a direct threat, started within a few hours of "my" fire and was contained at about the same time, withing about a week. Final toll: 3 houses and 6 other buildings. Totally lucky. It's not really over yet, these things can smolder for months. The 2003 fire mentioned above didn't go completely out, until it started snowing. But it is unlikely to endanger homes again. Whew! All that over last week. My week off!! $%^#$%^!!! I had no plans to be at home. At all. Oh well, C'est la vie...
So an update on my "Life do-over": stage 1 complete - house in order. Stage 2: get my paperwork in order, is well on its way. The fires required me to get 'em gathered, and centralized, so that's done, just gotta organize them, and get them scanned in. Then, grab the old computer and make sure all data is out of it and into the mac. Getting there...
That's all for now. No significant personal stuff. Other than been on a few dates that haven't panned out. But we keep trying.
A la prochaine...