Before the painters left on Friday they pulled all the paper off of the windows to our living room and bedroom. Woohoo! The rest of the windows are all covered still, so we didn’t see the fire that’s burning across the way until we were getting ready to retire. It was still light enough for me to get this photo. While it was still light enough they were using those special water-carrying helicopters and dumping loads of water on it. You can’t see in this picture—camera doesn’t zoom enough—but there’s a line of 30 or 40 fire-fighters on the left side of that dark area where all the smoke is. And you can actually see one little tiny flame in the photo that probably isn’t all that tiny when you’re up close to it.

We’re entering the season in southern California that I hate most of all… Fire season. They’re expecting it to be bad this year, too, because of all the rain we had the weeds and things grew more than normal, and they’ve all dried up by now so make good fire fodder.

We rarely have fires burning this close to us. This one’s down our hill, across a shallow neighborhood, across a 6-lane street, another shallow neighborhood (mobile home park), the big old water tank behind it, and up the hill. Close. But the light breeze coming off the ocean this evening was blowing smoke away from us, which I consider to be good. I always feel sorry for the firemen out there on a warm, dark night like this one. Not a job I’d ever want. I’m very, very glad that there are people who do want the job. Thank you, one and all!