Living where I do, you always live in dread of hearing the words "LEVEL 3 EVACUATION ISSUED". Just in case you are blessed to live in an area without wildfires, LEVEL 1 is the Get Ready level where you should start keeping a very close eye on the local fires because you could be in danger of evacuation. LEVEL 2 is the Get Set level where you start packing up your crap, gassing up the car, and generally be ready to evacuate at a moment's notice. LEVEL 3 is the Go Level where your life is in imminent danger if you don't get the heck out of dodge.

I have been in a LEVEL 3 twice. The first time I wasn't at home, so it was no big deal to up and leave the area. I got in a line of slow-moving cars and drove back to my house. The second time was much more serious. Once we hit LEVEL 3, absolutely everybody had left the area except me. I stayed behind running around my apartment building putting out ember fires so that my apartment wouldn't catch fire. Part of the time I was on the roof with a bandana tied around my nose and mouth so I could spot problems easier. After a couple hours, the fire department told me that it had gone way past dangerous, and I had to leave. Because I had stayed behind and "bravely fought to save my home" they promised that they would do their best to make sure it hadn't been for nothing. And they totally did. Other than smoke damage, the building only had a few spots on it.

Yesterday some places in the Lake Chelan region hit LEVEL 3. As I heard the advisory start screaching through everybody's mobile phones, I got that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomache that I always get.

Fast forward to today and all the evacuations have been downgraded and the bulk of the fire had been halted at around 20 acres lost. They still don't know how it started. Though I keep getting lightning alerts from my little weather station, so I guess that could be a possibility.

In Other News...

As a child of the 80's, I remember very well The Cold War... and Mikhail Gorbachev's "openess reforms" (гласность, a.k.a. Glasnost) which effectively ended it. Having lived through my entire childhood with nuclear war being a distinct possibility, it was nice to think that... just maybe... things had deescalated enough that the world could breathe a little easier knowing that catastrophic annihilation had been (temporarily, alas) pushed aside even a little bit.

Gorbachev's actions were wildly controversial. And nowhere more so than in the Country Formerly Known as the Soviet Union itself. Now that he has died at 91 years of age, I've seen his пицца хат (Pizza Hut) commercial making it's way through the internets...

If there's one short video which can sum up what Gorbachev in the 1980's was about to American audiences today... it's probably this commercial. I am still amazed that he agreed to actually do it. Which makes me kinda like him, because I love it when powerful people aren't above poking fun at themselves. Humor is a basic human condition, and willing to be the subject of it to better relate to those who are not powerful people... well... it just shows that you still have some humanity left in you. And that goes double when you allow the humor to be coupled with any amount of criticism towards your policies.

Probably why I'm such a fan of the White House Correspondents Dinner. Just the fact that an American president would dare to take part is pretty amazing when you think about it (well, when they actually do take part).

And I know this is a bit cliché... but now I actually want Pizza Hut. I'm all too easily susceptible to suggestion.