Sunny So Cal 3/52

Sunny So Cal

While the rest of the country has been dealing with temperatures well below normal, we’ve been having a heat wave here in Southern California. My car’s thermometer hit 90˚F on two separate days this week. Now, granted this was because the car had been sitting in the sun with the windows up, the temp never dipped below 86˚F either afternoon after opening it up and driving to school. It’s just not natural to have summer in January. We’re not in the southern hemisphere!

So why are we so hot? The Santa Ana winds have been blowing in off the desert to the east. We haven’t been getting any cool ocean breezes where we live — it’s a bit inland. But instead of having warnings about extremely low temperatures and worrying if we’ve left faucets to drip so they don’t freeze, we’ve been experiencing a different kind of anxiousness. You see, we’re experiencing a drought here in the desert (Yup, we pipe in all our water and irrigate the hell out of everything! Oh, and to ski, they draw up lake water and manufacture their own snow.) and with the winds and temperatures that high, the humidity in the single digits or low teens… we get put under a red flag warning. The means there’s a danger of wildfires. Luckily the few that started last week in the county were put out quickly, but it seems that one area closer to LA wasn’t as lucky.

Even in the middle of winter and usually when we’d be expecting a deluge of rain in about a month or so, we’re parched beneath those gorgeous sunny skies. Everywhere has its own problems. Just some insight into how paradise isn’t always what it appears to be. It looks like the winds have stopped now, but I’d send gladly ship out some of our heat if I could.

Gone to the Beach

Pedestrian bridge from our hotel to the beach across the PCH.

DH came home from a business trip this morning and we snuck out of town a little after 6pm. Traffic wasn’t too bad except for the border patrol check point in San Onofre which began moving promptly again at precisely 7:30 pm. Illegal immigrants must abide by the holiday schedule as well, you see.

So we’re all settled in and looking forward to a couple of carefree days. Have a great weekend!

Opaque

Last night we dumped the kids at the martial arts studio’s beach party and went downtown to eat at Opaque, one of those dining in the dark places. We were early for our reservations, so we sat in the lobby of the local W hotel and drank $10 cocktails.

The décor there was cool with some bright beachy colors and three giant rear-projection screens showing local surfing movies off-set by about 30 seconds each beneath a wall studded with surfboard fins. The neatest thing was the second floor walkway that ran along one side of the lobby. Every five feet or so, giant circles of a frosted translucent material punctuated the floor/ceiling. Whenever someone walked across, you could see the soles of their shoes fairly clearly and the rest quickly blurred.

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Thursday Thirteen: San Diego Tourism

13 Touristy Things To Do
In San Diego

Since I’ve got family visiting this week and I know of several people planning to visit the city, I thought I’d toss these up this week. We’re talking about going on the whale/dolphin tour thing tomorrow. DD asked why I didn’t include Disneyland (where we went on Sunday along with the rest of SoCal it seemed) and I told her that was LA/Anaheim, not SD. Ok. so La Jolla, Coronado aren’t in SD proper either and the Wild Animal Park is in Escondido. But they’re CLOSER! =P

1. The San Diego Zoo

2. The Wild Animal Park

3. Old Town

4. Mission San Diego

5. Sea World

6. The Midway

7. Hornblower Whale & Dolphin Cruises

8. The Seal Bus Tours

9. Seaport Village

10. The Seals @ Children’s Beach in La Jolla

11. Cabrillo National Monument

12. San Diego Maritime Museum: Star of India

13. The Hotel Del Coronado on Coronado Island

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

1 Susan Helene Gottfried	2 Melanie	3 Nicholas
4 Alice Audrey	5 Gwen Mitchell	6 Shelley Munro
7 Cora Zane	8 Lyrical Press	9 Lady Rose
10 On a Limb with Claudia	11 Paige Tyler	12 Heather
13 Kat’s Krackerbox	14 Lynne	15 Diana
16 Mama Bear	17 Savannah Chase	18 Dayle A. Dermatis

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The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

Slow Return to Normalcy

Roof Tiles Blown Off By Santa Ana Winds 10/21/07 We just received news that 20 staff and over 340 students in the Poway school district have lost their homes. Staggering news. In order to get the community back into normal routines, they have canceled the half week off school next week for Parent/Teacher conferences. Guess it’s a good thing we hadn’t planned a trip that long weekend.

I did manage to write in my journal yesterday and today. I was far too stressed to think about doing it on Monday as we scrambled from shelter to shelter. Once we were in Anaheim, we were too focused on what was happening back in San Diego and keeping the kids entertained. I barely made any progress in the paperback that had been tucked into my purse.

It was interesting to note that after we got back home Thursday, unpacked the car and began to settle back in I began to feel uneasy and felt the urge to journal again. I managed to write over 1,100 words while DH picked up dinner last night and I wrote another 1,000 today. I’m still having trouble sitting still long enough to pin down some particulars for reworking the story from earlier in the month.

Some words come easier than others, but I’m thankful our home was spared, unlike so many nearby. I’m also relieved that the view from that patio isn’t as devasting as I feared after watching the news. As bad as it is, it could have been so much worse.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to those involved with fighting these fires, those affected by these fires, and those who support their neighbors in the awful aftermath.

Thursday Thirteen: Evacuated!

We came back from Legoland to drive into a wall of smoke from the fires out in Ramona on Sunday afternoon. We decided we’d better pack our bags just in case and have everything ready to go in case we needed it. I would have happily unpacked it all unused! We decided we’d pack the van and parked it outside about 2am and grabbed some sleep. We woke up around 5am and could see the flames crawling over the next ridge So over. It looked like lava flowing down the canyon. We went to one of the evac shelters and spent the morning there and decided to head out to the coast to a friend’s house we stayed there until about 2 am and then drove to Anaheim to a hotel. We switched hotels just to get internet access, but we’ve been focused on what’s been going on at home. No writing this week! So, once you’re away and have time to stop and think, you begin to think about what you left behind. I must say, after having come home to a house fire before, it’s MUCH nicer to have a chance to pick and choose what you want to save than not.

UPDATE: We’re back home, the air quality here is slightly better than Anaheim: this morning you could smell the smoke from the fires up that way in the hotel air conditioning. DH’s office is a bit smelly, but our house up on the hill isn’t too bad. We lost some roof tiles to the wind on Sunday night, but that seems to be the extent of it.

13 Things We Should Have Grabbed or Done Monday Morning

1. Bathing suits: cabin fever and kids don’t mix well when you have a great view of the hotel pool. At least we can’t see the castle as Disneyland from our room.
2. Chargers for the Nintendo DS: cabin fever and kids don’t mix… DH did find an adapter, phew!
3. More underwear! Always a good thing.
4. Camping Bin: flashlights, batteries, air mattresses, emergency radio… DUH! I think this will do ouble duty from now on
5. Weekend Fish Feeders: I hope they haven’t eaten each other. I also hope the water isn’t toxic.
6. Some Playstation 1 games we already paid too much on eBay to replace once after the aforementioned house fire.
7. The autographed book one of Harry Potter and many other autographed books and CDs
8. The limited edition letterpress prints and other stuff in DH’s art portfolio
9. Our Tent: we might have stayed at the first evacuation center… *shrug*
10. PB&J: had the loaf of bread and sandwich meats, but DS won’t eat those *eyeroll*
11. Copy of email and phone contacts — had some, not all. Thank goodness for forums and mail2web.com!
12. DH’s car: we probably should have left it out in the driveway, not in the garage
13. Claritin! DS and I could breathe much easier if we had some… oh, right, it’s in the camping bin… *headslap*

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

1 Lorelei James	2 Ava Rose Johnson	3 R.G. Alexander	4 Amelia June
5 Gina Ardito	6 Cassandra Curtis	7 Jane E. Jones	8 Savannah Chase
9 Susan Helene Gottfried	10 Kelly McCrady	11 Alice Audrey	12 DD Mills
13 vixen	14 Sandra Schwab	15 Morgan St. John	16 Carrie Lofty
17 Unusual Historicals	18 Jennifer McKenzie	19 frustrated writer	20