Wildfires near us

This has been a difficult week: heatwave, pandemic, possible power cuts and to cap it all, wildfires! the possible need to evacuate, the need to prepare go-bags, to find documents and photos. our bags are still sitting by the porch. The wildfires are only 40% contained, as I type this. Very unsettling! and we're the lucky ones: the ones who did not have to evacuate, who only had to consider it.

It took quite a lot of determination to keep making jokes about it. Like the one I made in facebook, stealing from someone I don't know on twitter.

"It’s raining ash in California, forcing us to wear a different kind of mask than we wear for the pandemic when we go buy the generator we need for either rolling blackouts or preemptive outages so we can work from home if we haven’t been evacuated, if we have work or our house hasn't burned down. well, I don't need a generator, I just need some more wine to keep it going!"

But all is fine, thank you! The heatwave has gone away, the air is clear again, there's wine in the house and I've managed to chair sessions at AiML and WBL, and watch lots of interesting talks. I even managed to produce slides and talk for some 20 min on Friday. So we're back to the old worries about all the deadlines missed and all the work not delivered, yet. but hey, this is normal! Wildfires no, they're not normal.

and this picture is from 2016, not now, but somehow is even more frightening that I had no idea it was happening!