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Fire is scary.

This is the closest thing that I can find to what may have caused the fire in question.

So, it was a Saturday morning. The time was around 9:30 am when I heard the strange noise. I went outside to see what was going on and noticed smoke all around the house. I was living in a building that housed three apartments. The heat hit me when I walked out of the porch.

I looked up and saw it; fire was shooting out of the upstairs apartment. My neighbor, Eliot, shouted that I needed to get out as soon as possible. I ran in and grabbed my cat and my computer and left.

I was not the first to call 911 but I did call. It seemed to take forever for them to come. The fire looked to be over the front part of the house but was moving fast towards the area over my apartment. It was scary.

My apartment had the porch.

The good news is that Eliot and Andrew had taken their cat to  the vet earlier that day. I do not think the cat would have survived the fire had he been there. The bad news is that no one was going to be able to live in the building until it was totally repaired. The person from the Gainesville fire department said that she believed the fire was started with a problem with the toaster oven. Wow.

When all of this was happening, the landlord came by with the man who did any repairs to the building. After being able to get some stuff out of my unit, I was able to see that there was no damage to my apartment from the fire itself. There was some damage due to smoke and water but not from the fire. I was ok, Squirrel was ok and most of my stuff was ok. That is all good and I am truly grateful that no one was injured or worse.

This is the room where the fire started.

 

But, then it all became a total pain in the ass. I went to stay with my mother. She had an air mattress and a study and that is where I was staying. My back hurt. I liked my apartment. I started dreaming about it.

She offered to get a different air mattress but seriously, there is a ceiling for how comfortable that can really be.

I started looking for apartments and that grew sad. Some that I saw were way too small. I was thinking I would just find something for the summer but then began to see that the place I was in probably will not be ready by the time I would want to move in.

The landlord’s insurance is suing the tenants’ insurance. The fire was on February 18. Nearly a month later and nothing has been done.

There was a vine growing through this crack.

Luckily, I found a new place. That is good. I was back at the old place and saw this. You can see out from the inside and there was a plant growing into my living room.

Now, my new place is about three blocks from the old place. I have much more room and a nice porch. I even have a nice fireplace for cold nights like tonight.

Fire can be great. This fireplace makes me very happy.

The new place is nice and I am glad I found it. If you rent a place, please get renter’s insurance. Fire is scary.

Squirrel on her new porch, sitting in her cat tree.

 

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My writing for March 15, 2017 (Snakes! Taxes! Wiretapping!)

If you do not subscribe to all of my stuff, here are some pieces you may have missed:

Hope you check them out and let me know what you think!

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What do you think? Are we insane?

twitter trump jesus lord

The United States has elected some interesting people. Over the years, we have had pro wrestlers become governors. Actors have been president. For a long time, we even had a leprechaun in the House of Representatives. (Yes, Dennis Kucinich, I am looking at you. Right at you.) Being insane is not going to disqualify anyone from elected office here.

speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on Februar...

speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on February 10, 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now, we have elected a reality star. Some people say Donald Trump is also a successful businessman but his business model seems to be shit to me. He goes into a place, gets a bunch of government money, takes out some loans, hires local companies, they do the work, he never pays the, he files for bankruptcy, he moves to a new place to repeat all of that. While I never went to Trump University, I don’t think that is a good model to follow. It’s an insane model to follow.

Now the Tweeter in chief does not seem to understand that he has moved to a new world. He can no longer control every aspect of the story that is told about his life. Now people listen to what he says and expect him to say things that are, if nothing else rooted in reality. The problem is that for Trump, reality has always been whatever he wanted it to be. When the media asks his representatives about his claims, he calls them “rude.”

No, Mr. President, it is not “rude,” that is what they are paid to do. And coming from the most caustic person in politics, you have no business calling anyone rude. Ever.

What I am left wondering, amid the claims by Sean Spicer that when Trump said he was bugged, Trump was using air quotes or from Kellyanne Conway that Americans’ microwave ovens are turning in us, how does the world view us? I would love to know.

Take the poll! Let me know what you think of us!

[democracy id=”2″]

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Trumpcare in Two Images

Say what you will about Donald Trump and his new health plan, there are a few things that are just so true that if you are going to argue with them, you seriously should consider putting down that crack pipe. What are these two truths?

  1. The “American Health Care Act” has about as much of a chance of passing as the “Make Squirrel Montana Queen of the Country Act,” which does not exist.
  2. The only people who will really be helped by this legislation don’t really need any help.

Let’s start with 2. The Kaiser Family Foundation has a great tool. It shows how the tax credits put forth by the GOP will impact people based on their income. If you are 40 years old and you make $20,000 each year, this is what kind of help you will get:

Screen Shot 2017-03-09 at 12.28.21 PM

If you are 40 years old and you make $100,000, this is what you can expect:

Screen Shot 2017-03-09 at 12.28.02 PM

Seriously. Wow. The bottom line is that the more you make, the better off you will be under Trumpcare.

Next, you can probably skip worrying too much about this bill because everyone hates this bill. Democrats hate the fact that it will be sure to drive costs up, rather than down, that it relies on tax credits, which do nothing to help people living near or at or under the poverty line and it offers less in the way of services provided. The conservatives hate it because they think it is “Obamacare lite.” Because it is a bill that cannot be dealt with in the Senate via the reconciliation process, it will need more than 60 votes and that just is not going to happen.

Donald Trump may be a lot of things and he may be a good deal maker (I doubt it but let’s just pretend he made money by being good at that and not on the backs of working people all over American) but he sucks at dealing with Congress.

 

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This is one reason I do not “trust in the Lord”

twitter trump jesus lord

Today, I got up and did what has become a part of my normal morning routine, I checked Twitter to see what the most recent craziness has come out of the White House. This morning, I would not help but notice that “Trust in the LORD” is trending. Now, I know that the United States is one of the most church going counties on the planet but this image was just too much for me.

twitter trump jesus lord

This is from: https://twitter.com/nvrggivup

Now I know that when most people think of Donald Trump, they think about Jesus. I mean, who can forget that part of the Bible when our lord and savior extolls the virtues of “grabbing women by the pussy?” I know that was the part that kept me reading. That’s what it’s all about: rating, both for Christ and the Tweeter in Chief.

But then I was reading through some of the tweets telling me to “trust in the Lord” and while I am a big believer in karma, when people get too religious my mind goes back to Rwanda and the 1994 genocide. This is not because of its brutality and efficacy, but because of the role the church played. Like most of Africa, Rwanda is also a very church loving country.

The Ntarama Catholic church sits about an hour from Kigali. When the president’s plane went down in April 1994, people who lived near the church were scared. On April 15, the militia, known as the Interhamwe (those who fight together), ambushed area. Thousands took refuge in the church. At least five thousand people were butchered there.

I am not sure where the ideas that Donald Trump has ever given a thought to Jesus or the role of the Bible in his life has anything to do with the slaughter of innocent people in a Rwandan Catholic church but I have to just see the hypocrisy in both ideas. Trump has been divorced three times (though I don’t personally see an issue with that), has never seen marriage as a reason to not have sex with whomever and basically thinks that he has a right to do whatever he wants to anyone he wants. Take money from small businesses? Force them out of business? Sure, if it helps the Trump bottom line, why not? While I am no expert on the Bible of Jesus but if we were all wearing, “what would Jesus do?” bracelets, I am pretty sure sexual assault and fraud are not part of his repertoire.

And then the hypocrisy of the “trust in the Lord.” I get it. People like to believe in something and I do see the value in religion. The American civil rights movement got a lot of help and its start in churches. Having said that, blind allegiance to anything is just stupid.

But maybe the real connection between the Rwandan genocide, the stupid trending Twitter topic and Trump is that we seem to be on a path to genocide here and it is being led by people who claim to love Jesus. If that doesn’t scare you, it should.

 

 

https://vimeo.com/19089604