From the Homefront: Breaking News

What is that smell?

I was typing on my computer when I noticed a strange odor I couldn’t place…something chemical or plastic burning…to the point that it was almost overwhelming. For a moment I thought that my nose hairs had caught on fire! Luckily, they hadn’t.

I ventured into the kitchen and checked the oven, then the microwave, and then did a sniff test of everything around. The only strange smell that I could detect was coming from my cat’s litter box, which isn’t so strange when I come to think about it. The girl eats a lot of tuna and freshly cut turkey from a local Deli I go to. (Yes, she’s spoiled)

Well, an hour later, after I’d given up the quest of hunting for the strange smell, I decided to take a shower and hit the liquor store to grab my nightly essentials. As soon as I was walking out to my car, I heard the ghetto birds swarming overhead. For those of you who don’t know what “ghetto birds” are: they’re black helicopters that circle seedy neighborhoods looking for America’s most wanted, or news copters looking for a scoop. In this case it was the latter.

A block from my business/loft was a blockade of ten police cars, four fire trucks, and a street full of gawkers; myself included. The SBC now AT&T building a block from my pad was on fire! Fire crews had one of those huge ladders that extended from their vehicle to the top of the building, with smoke pouring out of the roof like a chimney. So I drove as close as I could, rolled down my window and reached into my glove box for my digital camera. Coughing from the rank smell, I pulled it out and turned the viewfinder on and snapped a shot. One terrible shot, and my camera blinked “full” and then “out of batteries.” I called my husband and said, “Honey, the SBC building is on fire! You got to get a shot of this!” I new he’d just gotten a new digital Sony camera that was tons better than my old HP that I’d gotten for Christmas four years ago, and although he was somewhat sleepy, he agreed.

I got to the liquor store, and the young brown-skinned clerk was just closing the door. “Did you see what’s going on out there?” I asked. “It really smells, doesn’t it?”
“No,” he said dryly, “I was just closing the door to keep you out.”
For a moment I’d almost forgotten my witty comebacks, but then quickly retorted, “Oh, I just thought you were trying to keep your smell in.” (Whatever that meant… not one of my best, I’ll admit.) I went to the back of the store and grabbed some water jugs and a bottle of cabernet and headed up to the counter.
“Didn’t your mom ever tell you that you shouldn’t leave the house with your hair wet?” he said.
“That’s a myth.”
“Yeah, it is.”

After some meaningless flirtation and a look at his recent tattoos, I headed back to the chaos. I asked my hubby if the shots had turned out, but he said that they didn’t. I wondered if he’d even remembered to take his camera out there? So I got on my Mac and tried searching the “breaking news” on this, but to no avail. I don’t know if it’ll be out tomorrow, because surely there was a bunch of press there. But the strange thing was, that as I was searching on the Orange County Register’s site, and found something that happened just three blocks away from me tonight! I don’t have a clue if these two incidents are involved with one another, but it sure is odd.

A big rig flipped over and caught on fire, killing at least one person just a couple hours before this incident with the AT&T fire had occurred! OC Reg: Few blocks away!

This location has been a constant place for disaster. The Metro Link crashed here a few years ago. A teenager died a block from here by crashing into the river basin, leaving nothing but a shrine behind, and I’m just glad I’m moving out in January! I don’t have a clue what this all means. I’m just putting together the puzzle pieces, seeing if they’ll fit, and trying to make some sense of it all… like we tend to do in our daily lives and adventures....

xxoo
Angel (surrounded by chaos, lol)