All's well here...

What a stressful few days here in San Diego.

Instead of sending out multiple e-mails to family and friends I decided to just post here.

First off, we are fine. We were "thisclose" to being evacuated though, just a few miles south (as the crow flies). We did pack the cars - just in case. We went thru this exactly (and I mean EXACTLY) four years ago.

We experienced lots and lots of falling ash and debris. The fires here were huge. About one million people were displaced but San Diego is an awesome city and they all pulled together to get thru this. I can't think of another city as well prepared as we are. We've (and I mean the collective "we" the county "we") have been preparing for situations just like this since the Cedar Fires 4 years ago. We get regular "Disaster Training" at work.

Foster is off school this entire week due to the fires. This means I get to play "stay at home mom" tomorrow. If we get all our home chores done, I have an outing planned. The outside air quality is really unhealthy though.

So, for now, things look good for us. But, in reality, the county suffered greatly. The fire that affected us mostly where Laura and I live (the Witch fire) is still only 20% contained. For those of you who slept thru math, that means a considerable amount, 80% of it, is still NOT contained and remains burning. They don't expect full containment of all the fires (there are multiple ones still burning in the county) for another few weeks. Then, all the rebuilding takes place.

I work for the county and therefore I am a "public servant" (that really is what we are called) and can therefore be called out to help out at any shelter or at any office in the future. But, since the courts are closed this week, my jury duty was postponed 'til next week. I plan to return to jury duty on Monday if all is still well.

Thanks to all who took the time to send a quick e-mail to check on us (and those who kept us in their thoughts - you know who you are) - we really appreciated it.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...