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My life has been going quite well lately, not great and many things could be better, but all in all, well. My prostate cancer seems to be in remission and thus my life expectancy isn’t being clearly imperiled by that deadly disease, at least for the immediate future. My cars are both running well, but of course, one is a 1996 Geo Prizm which is twenty-three years old, and the new one is a 2003 Subaru Outback which makes it sixteen years old, but they are running well and both have new tires.

My big question the last few months has been my house. It is sixty-three years old, but it’s in okay shape. Except for the fire hazard. After carefully observing the Paradise, California, fire risks from three months ago when it was a beautiful city, compared to two months ago when it was a burnt out disaster, it became obvious that my situation here was very similar to theirs before their fire.

Over the years, especially on the 4th of July when there are a lot of fireworks shot off nearby, I have made a point of clearing away obvious fire hazards, and watering down the surrounding bushes and such things. But, after the Paradise fire, I got really busy clearing out everything flammable, and there was a lot. Now, my house looks a little stark because nearly all the bushes and trees are gone, and a couple of more things that are not so close are going to go. The fire experts usually say there should be at least twenty feet between one’s house and anything that is flammable, and I am almost in compliance with that dictum.

My general thought about our beautiful little city is amazement at how much money is presently being spent by locals on beautifying their personal property. It seems everyone is fixing their things to be pretty, but not fire resistant, except for me. My plan for years, “Cover the basics and then improve.” It appears that everyone else’s goal is to spend to the limit of their credit on fun things. Nearly everyone, it seems, has some sort of major camping or sporting device proudly on display in their driveway. I have an old car in good shape and now a house that is more likely to survive a city-wide fire.

I like to have slack in everything I have to do so that when things don’t go as planned it is easy to recover and when things are going well, to create a little more slack.