So there was a fire in our building last night. Directly above our unit, in fact. No one was hurt, but I’m assuming the damage upstairs was considerable — sprinklers and hoses were involved, and Kate and I spent about three hours with foul-smelling water draining through our ceiling and into  several very well-placed buckets.

I should reiterate: No one was hurt. Dexter was surprisingly well-behaved, even when the firemen came in to check for structural damage (there wasn’t any) and water leakage (hence the buckets). And now, other than the tiny spots of puckering in the ceiling and the lingering stench of smoke — oh, and the tarps heaped around the place — everything is back to normal. It’s like it never happened. The dog is sleeping, I’m at the keyboard, the world is turning apace.

Given that Matt Brown went through just about the worst scenario of an apartment fire just this summer, all I can do is exhale and think about how lucky we were. Today’s post was supposed to be a simple link to this NOW piece I’ve written about TIFF’s Polanski series, but obviously life has intruded. Not too much, you understand, but enough.

Oh, and let’s all be sure to clean out our dryer lint traps every four or five weeks. Stitch in time, and all that.