No, really - I'm back this Time

This site doesn't really deserve any readers, since I've been gone for so long; but in the off chance that any of my previously frequent visitors stop by, this will serve as an explanatory post for why I've been away for the past while. And I do plan to post more often. I recently got a desk job that requires me to go to bed early, get up early, work long hours on the phone and computer, and then come home with just enough time to fall asleep so I can effectively do the same thing the next day. Argus... Ed... Bottle Rocket... you guys know where I'm comin' from. So this will give me lots of stuff to gripe about, I'm sure. And at least I can surf the internet at work and do this sort of stuff there.

So anyway, as Argus detailed on his blog, Fast and Dumb (listed in my links), things have been a little heated lately. Here's my account of what went down.

On the 7th of this month, between 8:30 and 9:00am, I slowly awoke from my sleep to the sound of what I thought was rain outside my bedroom window. I groaned and rolled over on the pillow, but it wasn't long before my ears perked up. The "rain" began to sound like hail. Figuring that this was an impossibility in the summer months, I opened my makeshift curtains (bed sheets) and saw that the outside of the window sill, upper gutter/roof and porch were on fire. The pitter patter of rain was actually the crackling of burning lumber and bits of charcoal falling onto the shingles of the rooftop beneath my window.

"Holy Shit!" I yelled. (Or something to that effect.)

"What's going on?" asked Argus from his bedroom.

Bounding to my other room (my "office," as I liked to call it), I exclaimed, "The fucking house is on fire!" causing him to run out and investigate with me. When I opened the door to the office a little wider, I saw that the flames weren't solely on the outside of the house; the far wall by the window was ablaze, and the curtains (towels in this room) were melting and falling to the carpet. Flames were crawling quickly along the ceiling, also. At this point Argus went back into his room where, as I learned from his blog entry, he grabbed money that was stuffed in books and called the fire department.

It was then that many thoughts started quickly rushing through my head. The first thing that came to mind was how surreal it was to be waking up to the smell of camp fire in the house. And that's just what it smelled like; that nose-pinchingly sharp, almost sweet smell of burning wood. Seeing the flames outside the window was very scary, and I couldn't believe my eyes. I can remember being bored as hell whenever we'd do fire drills in school. "As if it would ever happen!" I thought. But there I was, and no doubt about it, it was happening.

I then realized that the house was going to burn, that there was nothing I could do about it, and that I would have to leave - or, you know, die. So there I am in bare feet, wearing a black t-shirt and Simpsons boxer shorts, and I'm about to run outside (with none of my posessions) to watch the show. Show, he says? Yeah, that's pretty much how it went down. Not only did everyone in the complex wake up to gawk at what was happening (okay, I can understand why they would - especially the people in the condos that were attached to ours), but people from outside of the little, wall-enclosed neighbourhood came with fucking lawn chairs! I'm surprised they had the courtesy to leave their marshmellows at home.

So then I started to consider what I should grab and drag outside, knowing full well that this is exactly what I've been told my whole life not to do if I ever found myself in a fire. At this point there wasn't much smoke (the alarms hadn't even gone off), but I could feel the heat from the flames. Like I said, I immediately knew that I would have to leave, but another automatic response of mine was to think of all my cool stuff. Since I didn't have any cash in my many books, my first thoughts were of my record collection. Years of searching shops, yard sales and ordering from England had made it very important to me, and I didn't want to see them melted to nothing. Then there was my closet full of many leather coats and other expensive clothing. "I could grab an armload of the best ones?" I thought to myself. But in these few seconds of contemplation I also thought how utterly stupid it would be to end up on a mortician's slab with LPs fused to my charred body, a skeletal smile on my blackened face.

"Man," the morgue attendant would joke to the janitor. "I've heard about your die-hard music lovers, but this is ridiculous!"

So I decided to leave with nothing and jogged to the end of the hall. Meanwhile, Argus was busy looking for Pepper, who acts more like a human than she does a cat. Luckily she was soon discovered hiding under his bed. I ran down the stairs and outside where several neighbours were shouting "Did you call 911?" to one another. Then some guy, eager to save the day, demanded to know whether anyone was in the house or not.

"Yeah, my cousin," I said. "But he's coming right down with the cat." So then the dude barges in the house (not even removing his shoes!) to find him. They emerged seconds later.

In the end, three units were left vacant from the damage the fire, water and smoke caused. It was mostly the roof and porches that burned, so most of the things that got wrecked were due to smoke and water. My records were more or less okay, incidentally. I'm pretty mad that the jackets are warped with water damage, but the vinyl itself is good to go, so they'll just have to do me until I can replace them each, one by one, with copies that are in better condition.

Oh, and since the incident I've seen a lot of fire extinguishers, hoses and escape routes in buildings, and I've got to say, it's only now that they look "real" to me. They're there for a reason.