Fluffbuff

It's LA, baby.

On my way home from the dentist Tuesday afternoon, I saw smoke and smelled fire. The closer I got to our house, the worse things got. By the time I was two miles from home I was driving at twice the speed limit, my heart in my throat, ominous visions of destruction in my mind. Ben had seen the smoke from the other side of LA and called me on the cell phone while I was on the road. Fortunately, as soon as I turned on Chevy Chase (we live in the Glendale hills), I knew we were okay. The fire turned out to be in Griffith Park, several miles from here, but still the air was an eerie orange glow and it was snowing ashes. Over the years I have become accustomed to the smell of fires and this is not the first time we find our cars covered in ashes for a fire many miles away. I can only imagine what it must have been like for those close to Griffith Park.

Then last night, a police helicopter circled over our house for almost two hours. When Ben went to put out the trash for today's collection, three police cars were going down our road (a cul-de-sac) and a policeman told him to go back inside. Twenty minutes later we had cops with flashlights in our backyard; we still don't know why.

Living in LA gets you used to a heightened state of alertness, for lack of a better description. The past fifteen years have provided me with plenty of excitement I could have done without.

In 1992, barely a month after moving here, I found myself in the middle of a riot. My area was in the curfew zone and the war-like scenes from my window were the same ones being broadcast on TV — something I found particularly disturbing. One night I had to go out to attend a Bris ceremony (I learned on that occasion that those things cannot be rescheduled) and on the way home I was in the street as shots were being fired from the roofs above.

After that, I was home alone one day when someone tried to break in.

Then it was the Northridge earthquake and by then I was living in North Hollywood. Yeah, I have a knack for moving where the action is. That actually scared me more than the riots and the attempted break-in combined.

Within months, two people I knew lost their houses to different fires and a close friend almost lost his to the floods. A little later I almost stepped on a rattlesnake at Art Center during finals. I should probably stop or I'll scare anyone interested in moving to LA. Just be prepared, if you are heading this way, to hear choppers over your head on a regular basis unless you live in the most exclusive part of Beverly Hills and Bel Air. Apparently, helicopters are not allowed over the rich and famous unless it's an emergency, and the air is off-limits for news scavenging purposes.

Everything seems calm today.

Regular fiber content to be resumed tomorrow.