More fire stuff: Interestingly, the local NPR coverage has been the best: [link] The area that is burning is the location of both powerlines (LOTS of power outtages county-wide, 30-40 miles away from the fire including Compton and Long Beach because the power poles are going down) and a huge part of the communication infrastructure.

On a personal note, this is also the area that we were hoping to move to within the next couple of years. Hmm...

I don't understand people who won't leave when disaster looms.

yeah, me neither. I think it's just stupid. Idiotic.

Where have you been living? I think I'd be creeped (crept?) out living somewhere with a creepy laundry room. I can't see the creep stopping there.

My last apartment building was otherwise wonderful, but the laundry room was a dingy underground room lit by one greenish overhead lightbulb (complete with a creepy unlit toilet stall behind a ramshackle slat door) that you had to go down dark narrow stairs, through a dirt floor basement filled with stored junk, and past a raw hole knocked in a brick wall to get to. Every time I went down there I felt like Buffalo Bill was going to tell me to put the lotion in the basket.

Thankfully, the creep stopped at the door to the basement stairs. Which I frequently had to close late at night in passing.

That's it, Matt! Creepy.

Did you grow up with basements? Finished ones?

Yes, and no. Keep in mind, I only remember growing up in the one place.

I didn't grow up with basements. My grandparents had them; one creepy and one not. I have very definite opinions on them. As in, I have nightmares that wake me up yelling. Thankfully, my basement is not creepy. I couldn't have bought it if it was, my reactions are that bad.

Fires=scary. I can get the initial temptation not to leave because really, does this happen (but I have more warning, I'm thinking hurricanes) but...then I read up on Mt Stromlo and NO.

In my apartment block in Philly, I didn't find the laundry room to be creepy, but it was still cold, poorly lit and ill-provisioned, and a ludicrous distance from my apartment. I feel very comfortable with my current stance of refusing to live anywhere without a laundry and a dishwasher. (My apartment in Ivanhoe had a European-style laundry, which is perfectly acceptable.)

What is a European-style laundry?

Fires=scary. I can get the initial temptation not to leave because really, does this happen (but I have more warning, I'm thinking hurricanes) but...then I read up on Mt Stromlo and NO.

In the fires early this year around Melbourne, many people decided to stay and defend their homes, and wound up dying in their cars trying to flee once they saw how bad it was. However, it seems Emergency Services was negligent in not advising people of the extent of the danger.

Bec's farm was threatened by fire when she was growing up. Her parents opted to stay, with all their kids, and try to protect the place. It burned out some of their acreage, but they were very fortunate that it didn't reach the house. Seriously terrifying for small children.

What is a European-style laundry?

Instead of getting its own room, it was set into a cupboard area. Saves on space.

Oh! Why, I have one of those! Wouldn't call a space big enough to fit a full-size W/D a "cupboard", though. It's a, um, "laundry nook".