(please keep in mind folk's privacy when discussing, publicly, how close the fires are to where they live. Specific questions are welcome via email)

Thanks for letting us know that our forum friends are safe!

jessica, since you and I have already "talked" today, I knew you were all safe, thank goodness.

I'm hoping that everyone in their path stays safe too.

Annie

Glad you're all safe!

Totally off topic (but that's what Conversations is for, right?) recently I've noticed an increasing frequency of people calling you Jessica instead of Jessy. Is this a new preference on your part?

FOAS: truth be told, long time ago, DH set up my email and some of my user names as 'Jessy' when I started using too much of HIS accounts. I usually go by and slightly prefer 'Jessica' IRL. Since I am too lazy to change all the net stuff, and as long as you don't call me 'late for dinner', I don't care much. Most people use both. If I'm asked for my preference, I'll tell you 'Jessica', but I still answer to anything, including Jennifer, which I find most used when folks forget my name! I consider it petty to nit-pick either way, life is too short, etc., JMHO.

Annie and I had a conversation about it looong time ago when I visited her and she remembers. I think others may have picked up on it as well.

'EJ' works too heh heh

Ok thanks, Jessica. I know how you feel. Personally I would to be called nourishmentatoptheremainingbaseofafelledtree, but somehow it just seems too much to ask.

I thought we were just supposed to call you "Evil". :D

Glad you're out of harm's way. I heard from my BIL that the air quality was awful. Of course it's not exactly great here either. Smoke from the Yosemite fires settled over the valley today so thickly that we couldn't even see the mountains at all.

Jennifer, I'm glad to know that you are safe from the fires. Thinking of you all that are in the area.

BTW, Jenny, I love your new name.

Glad to hear all is well. I remember the CA fires when I was out there two years ago. Very dramatic, and sad.

Pam -- who also answers to Pat, quite often.

Well I can remember Jessica since it's the name of one of my granddaughters. She sometimes gets Jessy but more often we use Jessica.
I hope the fires are under control by now.

SharonCb

"Jen,"
I really hate hearing the news about fires in CA. Fire is my biggest fear. We had one (a small one) last year on our mountain and all I could think about were the images from the CA fires a couple of years ago.

Thinking about all those folks out there.
Deb, is what my friends call me
Debbi, is how I usually introduce myself
Betty, is what I usually get called

Glad to know that EJ (Evil Jessy/Jessica) and all our other forum friends in the wild fire areas are o.k.

Teresa aka Theresa, sometimes "Terry" by folks who don't know me that well, humph! and who don't know that only, ONLY my uncles and other family on my mother's side are allowed to call me that!

Evil Jenny doesn't sound right.

LOL!

Update: It's an ashen smokey mess over here. I awoke in a panic at 5:30 this morning to the smell of smoke wafting in our open bedroom window. The fires are far away, but you wouldn't have known it! The haze hung low and the air had a yellow tint. The sky appears blue now, but it's still a bit yellow. I hope that they can get a handle on this before we see some of our brutal winds.

I was wondering because I saw a news bit that said it was raining ashes as far as downtown. I've been wondering about our CA friends.

Brenda

We live 140 miles north of the fire and our valley is filled with smoke. DD lives in Valencia and says itÂs raining ash and the smoke is unbearable. Our humidity is down to about 6%, the mountains are so dry and all we can do is hope that we make it through the holiday weekend without someone starting a fire while cooking a hot dog. CanÂt wait for school to start down south so all the folks that come up her camping will stay home.

ClaudiaÂÂÂwho is still called yaya by my younger brother

We just returned from a quick trip up to Mulholland Highway-- the infamous road that cuts across the top of the Santa Monica Mountains, to get a panorama of the breadth of the burn. It's fairly wide, the flames aren't too high, just an evil red glow. Thankfully the air currents have shifted and we're no longer able to smell the smoke nor see the haze. We're without our Santa Ana's--the evil high winds that come in Sept, Oct & Nov-- so the flames while burning far and wide, aren't the devil force that overtakes people and their homes in a blink.
The sad fact is that some of these dense brushy (read--NOT GREEN) mountains & canyons haven't burned in 25+ years and the underbrush mixed with our three year drought makes for some ready fuel.
When and if the rainy season hits, we're due for some sliding hills and a mountain of sediment to wash down into our reservoirs. All this in bankrupt California! Sigh...

I can imagine how tense this must make everyone even if you are "far" away..... best wishes to anyone who is within the range of being able to smell or see the smoke. So sorry....

Grace

I was just checking in to make sure everyone was safe, I saw updates on the news that there are more fires, bigger fires. Sigh.

Ellen, I was sure there would be mudslides after the fires. Elery's son lives in California and says that something is always either shaking, sliding or burning.

Stay safe.

Annie

California is a huge state and none of us are in the danger areas right now. I usually see fire fallout over the ocean, but it's been oddly clean. It's going east - there are now reports of it mucking up Las Vegas.

What I hate about media fire coverage is when they report that million-dollar homes are in danger, yadda-yadda. What the heck difference does it make what the value of the homes are? It's sick. It's schadenfreude. Okay. So it isn't Appalachia, come on!

And a common misconception is that the dry brush should have been cleared by the government and homeowners. Well, in California, one week the canyons are bare, then all of the sudden there's green stuff and flowers growing all over like weeds and the next day it's dry as a bone. Just the way it is. It's brush. I suppose some of it could have been cleared but no one is in charge of every nook and cranny of every canyon in California.

Homeowners do what they can and shouldn't be blamed for living where they live. If we continue that line of logic, heck no one should live in hurricane and tornado and earthquake and flood-prone areas at all. Life is not risk-free, that's all.

I'll slink off and drink some tea now...

LOL, Gina, we all choose where we live. I happen to live where we get 10 feet of snow a year, where it's twenty below zero several times a winter and where million dollar homes slide off into Lake Michigan when people are foolish enough to build too close to the edge of the water and underestimate the power of those 90 MPH winds in the winter storms or forget those storms can lash up 10 or 12 foot waves easily.

Oh, and tornados in the summertime.

I shovel all winter, curse at the gas company whenever I get my heating bill and have my basement ready for tornado season.

I don't think that probably any place is perfect.....

It would be nice if there WERE a solution to your annual fires but frankly, I think it's a force of nature. Dry stuff burns and green stuff grows there and it's all part of the cycle. People don't particularly like it, I know, but it's the way of the great Mother who does as she pleases without our permission.

Stay safe anyway, all that smoke can't be good for a person...

Annie

Gina - Schadenfreude. That's what most all "news" is about these days. Nothing unique about adding "interest" to this story.

Well, today the sky is mucked up in my area, and there's a slight bit if ashes falling. I don't smell it yet. I'm washing my car anyway - can't have bird poop eating away at my paint!

TV "news" is the worst. I never watch it, but I wanted to see what was up with the fires. These anchors or whatever they're called now are terrible. They wear more makeup than drag queens, they're pulled-up, pushed-out, botoxed, mealy-mouthed prompter-reading morons. So they sit there and say "are those million-dollar homes the fire is approaching?" (As if they themselves are not the millionaires they are.) Dang, throw a rock in California and you hit a million-dollar home.

Sorry for going on and on, but they are saying it every time I turn on the fire news. I'm not watching anymore. Sickening.

Now, I got whacked verbally by a couple of members for badmouthing the media, a group of people that I mostly equate with things like snakes and cockroaches, so be careful. (grin)

Annie

I don't know that TV news is worst. Poor Jaycee took up the entire first five pages of Sunday's NY Post, including front page. How many people in NY have a personal interest (other than entertaining themselves) in a girl who disappeared in California 18 years ago? I guess it's more important to the masses than Teddy, whose death in some ways affects the country for better or for worse, yet who only came in second place with just two pages following.

I would never consider the NY Post a serious paper, but this is indicative of what the general population gets off on.

Thinking of you all in California and the surrounding area.

I live in Hurricane country... I at least have notice!

((Hugs))

First, I'm happy to hear that so far all of our friends here are safe and out of harms way. Mother Nature will continue to do what she wants and that's the way it is in my mind. Heck, I live in the heart of tornadoe alley with no basement or storm cellar. Not to mention ice storms..LOL!

It is what it is and all we can do is deal with it and prepare the best we can...life and the world will go on.

"These anchors or whatever they're called now are terrible. They wear more makeup than drag queens, they're pulled-up, pushed-out, botoxed, mealy-mouthed prompter-reading morons."

ROFLMAO!!! And they can't dance, sing, or get tips like most queens I've seen over the years...lololol! Sorry, I couldn't help myself with that one folks. Dont' get me started on the weather men/women...they are like shrimp on crack down here.

David

I'm with ya on the "no-news" media these days, Gina!!
Perfect description of some of them, BTW.
You won't get whacked from here!

It's one of the reasons we completely got rid of our cable TV. Now we get nothing, nada, not a single channel! Oh, we have the "box" to watch movies and such, but not TV.

I can get more real news, in a fraction of the time, from my choice of sources on the internet than watching several hours worth on TV.

Works for me!

Deanna

Oh, we are SOOOOO fortunate here with some of our news stations! We don't get the Hollywood wannabes, and some pretty good pros, from San Francisco and Sacramento and here in Monterey. Now, this isn't to mention the weekend intern-training-camp stand-ins, but by and large they are pros. Here in Monterey, we are fortunate to have both an office of the National Weather Service and the meteorological dept of the Naval Postgraduate School, and both have provided professionals to do stand-in weather. Now the personnel might not always be pros on camera, but they know their stuff, and no one would ever mistake them for Hollywood types IYKWIM.

I admit that I cringe when I watch TV news/weather people in other parts of the country when we travel.

My Aunt & Uncle and cousins are in Woodranch Simi Valley Is this near the fires??? I tried to call and got no answer but they travel alot so that may be the reason for no response! TIA

Hey Eileen, rest easy. Simi is quite a ways away from the fires. They may have the ash and smoke like the rest of us, but they're out of harm's way.

GINA- you're so right about the "news" anchors.If I hear one more moron interview like "Well Bob, how do you feel watching your house burn down, etc" OY!

Great article in the LA Times today about the news anchors blabbing on & on about the fire bombers not in use.

Here is a link that might be useful: James Rainy's article

I keep up with the fire news on the web. It's much more up to the minute.

Speaking of news anchors. I hear LA got Alycia Lane after she was fired from a Philadelphia station. What a bimbo! My sympathies.

Thanks for the info!!!

I just occured to me that if those Super Scoopers fill up in a lake or the ocean, they inevitably must pick up some sea creatures. That means homeowners in the fire area may find the occasional rockfish, tuna or bass in their yard.

A thousand years from now the geologists will be sure the sea covered the San Gabriel Mountains in 2009 because they will find fossilized bones from fish only found in the Pacific.

LOL PAM!