No, not holiday planning but its fire season in Southern California. Seems like every October we burn.

If I heard correctly, we’ve got twelve fires burning right now. I could be wrong, but that’s what I believe I heard on the news this morning.

The sky is thick and the air is bad. I woke up to find a light veil of ash covering my car. The Snitch and I had to take allergy pills before leaving the house because the air quality is so bad.

And if fire wasn’t enough of a problem, toss in some Santa Ana winds and you’ve got a real mess on your hands.

The worst fire I remember was the Cedar Fire in 2003. Man, that was bad. My sister’s boyfriend had his family living up in the desert at this time and our only highway was on the verge of burning. She and Mister drove out there, at 11pm, to pick up his sister’s and bring them down to L.A. It took them something like six HOURS to make a 2.5 hour drive. Talk about being worried. The girls stayed with my sister and her boyfriend for almost two weeks until the fires were out and they were able to safely return to the desert again.

That October we couldn’t open our doors or windows for anything that wasn’t necessary. But it was SO damn hot, too. The thin veil of ash on my car today was nothing compared to the 1/2″ of ash on my car then. Even being indoors it hurt to breathe too deeply.

Right now our San Diego office is closed to keep our employees safe. San Diego sounds like its got the worst of it right now. Something like 80,000 acres have burned and tons of people have been evacuated from their homes. Poor things. I can’t imagine having to leave and decide what valueables to take and what to leave and let burn.

Its sort of eerie outside right now. The sky isn’t grey smokey but you can see smoke spreading across the sky. The sun is shinning atop the smoke and its putting out a weird bright orange glow. Even the mood outside feels different. Its hard to explain but you can tell people feel it. Maybe its because the smell in the air keeps people reminded of what’s going on right now.

Keep SoCal in your prayers and hopefully we’ll stop burning soon.

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This post was drafted yesterday so as of now 270,000 people have been evacuated from their homes and as of 5:15 last night 257 homes have been lost to the flames. I’m sure over the last twelve hours it hasn’t gotten any better. We’re expecting 90 degree weather with 75-90 mile an hour winds. Oh God, its going to be another bad day in S.CA