Forest Fires

Yesterday morning I awoke to what I thought was the aroma of a wood-burning stove. That wouldn't be so unusual in New England this time of year, but I remembered I was on the west coast in the land of the warm.

Then I read in the local newspaper about a forest fire burning east of us. Apparently it started from a "controlled burn" that went awry. And then the Santa Ana winds kicked up (occasional winds coming from the desert and blowing westerly)--something the starters of the controlled fire didn't anticipate.

This is a view looking toward the west late yesterday afternoon. We're about 3 or 4 miles from the ocean. Thankfully, no homes were lost and there were no injuries reported.

On a completely different subject, and not in the least craft-related, I'm constantly amazed at how the internet has affected our lives. At the moment, I have a friend who is on a 109-day world cruise aboard the Queen Elizabeth II. She is traveling solo, and is keeping up an online journal of her experiences. She reports (from Auckland, NZ) that a man was put off the ship in New Caledonia (the previous stop) for punching another man over a dispute in the self-service laundry room. Seems he took the other guy's laundry out of the washer because he hadn't retrieved it quickly enough and there was a line of people waiting. I can certainly understand this---wouldn't that just be another of my pet peeves! My hubby wonders if the ship company will pay the guy's way home. Probably.

Also at the moment, my husband's brother and wife are on a 10-day cruise through the Panama Canal. Today we watched their journey online by way of Princess Cruises bow cams. Then we switched over to the Panama Canal official web cam and watched their ship move through the locks.

When we're not watching the travelogs, we're looking at the Weather Bug. At any time of the day or night we can check out the weather conditions in our hometown in Connecticut. It gives us the current conditions, or, with one click we can see 24 hours of weather in a speedy slide show.

This is all so much more entertaining than most of what is on TV. Who needs to watch reality shows! I'm anxiously awaiting the next installment of the antics aboard the QE2.....