Gosh, am I glad we don’t live in Southern California anymore. Looks like the whole damn place is burning down.
My father, a Merchant Marine officer, used to ship out of Long Beach. That’s where I was born, before we moved to Saudi Arabia.
Twelve years later, we came back to the States. He took a job with Standard Oil. Settled in San Francisco: a variety of Nirvana. Unfortunately, though, he decided he could make more money working for Union Oil, shipping out of grody Southern California, than shipping out of ritzy-tizy Northern California.
{sigh}
That’s how we ended up back in Long Beach: chez pitz.
Couple years ago, friends La Maya and La Bethulia bought a cool trailer home down the Coast, practically on the ocean and surrounded by forest. They haven’t said that they’ve been moved out — they do, after all, retain a place in the Valley. But…just now you couldn’t pay me to stay there! In California, I mean. Those fires can move with the speed of a rocketing baby. You get out of the way now, or you may not be able to get out of the way.
At any rate: mighty grateful just this moment not to be in California. The wind is WHALING in out of the west…that’s after it’s crossed hundreds of miles of barren desert and a forested mountain range. You don’t even wanna know what it must be like in the southern California as we scribble.
Lessee what Wunderground sez here: Phoenix temp: 63. Feels like: 60. Wind: 19 miles an hour.
hmmm…. I’d be surprised if the wind speed were only 19 mph just now. But I don’t have a windsock out back. So: dunno. The thermometer says it’s 55 degrees out there: almost 10 degrees lower than the Weather Service claims.
{sigh} Welp, I’d better get off my duff and venture out into the stormlet. The Queen of the Universe is running low on dog food, so the Human needs to traipse down to the local gourmet grocery store and buy up a stock of canned doggy-gourmet food.
Ugh! How can I count the ways….? Well, the rush hour is over, anyway, so I can turn left out of our neighborhood to go in the direction of the Royal Grocer’s. During the rush hour, you can’t do that and so have to go north in order to go south. (Yeah: That’s right turn/left turn/right turn; left into the parking lot.) At least that wind isn’t carrying flames. Just now.