On Oct 24, 2007, at 17:17, Sue Harvey wrote:
has seriously made me think about all the important documents, deeds, insurance etc and to get them all together where they are easily accesible,
All our -- important but small -- documents (birth certificates, marriage certificates, my naturalization certificate, passports etc) are in a bank's lockbox. Well worth the price, since the bank's vaults are much better protected than anything we could provide at home. Also, banks' assets are the first, sometimes only ones, to be rescued (the root of the animosity betwen Mayor Giuliani and the NYC fire dept, post 9/11)
For the rest... Just about everything is much beyond trying to rescue, even if we could decide what's most important (we both love books and the house is lined and littered with them). Like Sue, I'm neither in a flood plain nor in an area prone to wildfires. So, I'm very, very careful to make sure that every cigarette I smoke is fully extinguished :)
Though, a near fire we once had was not started by my smoking, but by our (then) 5yr old... Who made himself a "reading nest" on the top bunk bed, in storage in the basement (TV room). He nailed to the wall a wool blanket, which made a kind of tent around him and his pillows. From there, he could peek out at what his father was watching on TV but could also shut himself off and read, if it was of no interest to him. His "reading light" was a naked bulb. Which touched the blanket, sometimes. And which he forgot to turn off one evening... The next morning, as we descended from the top floor to the ground one, we were met by clouds of smoke coming up the staircase from the basement... Really scary, since, at the time, I was still "into" miniatures (dollhouse) and my workshop -- full of combustible and potentially explosive -- "stuff" was down there too...
Only the TV room ended up being a total loss (some becauuse things burnt, some because of the water), but we've been very, very careful about turning off the lights since, too :)
-- Tamara P Duvall http://t-n-lace.net/ Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
