Oh My!

Yesterday, we were doing laundry at Serena's. (We gave her the washer and dryer with the understanding that we could do laundry at her house.) Howard went outside to put something in our car. He was surprised by the neighbor calling out "Hey, be careful, there is a bear in the area!" Sorry, that just ISN'T something that happened anywhere else we have lived! Yes, in upstate New York there were occasional bears. But that wasn't anywhere in our neighborhood, although there were church members who saw them. Our house was too surrounded by many others. We did have deer who slept in our yard (we could tell by the grass) but that was it. In Iowa we didn't even have that. There was an unnerving reality of "you have now changed locations" to that warning! grin

We were driving home this afternoon when there was a sign on the freeway saying something like "Fire on Green Mountain, visible smoke". Okay, we didn't know where Green Mountain was. Kept driving. Got closer to home, we didn't pass the fire. We turned off at our exit and there were so many cars going our way. Hm. Looked over to the foothills and BLAST! We saw the fires. Oh dear. So THAT is the name of the mountain! Bad words. The smoke was blowing away from our apartment, but we knew that could change. Text messaged Serena,"Can we stay with you tonight?" She wrote back, "yes, but why?"

Got home, started packing a suitcase for the next few days. Closed all of the windows, hoping that will keep the smoke from adding its essence to our things. Debate as to whether how many days we should pack for as well as what exactly we should take.

The last we had heard, the fire was 85% contained, with cooler weather and perhaps rain expected. The bad news? As we drove by on our way to Serena's, the wind had shifted and was blowing straight toward our place. But the windows are closed (also good news!)

We bought bookcases today, to replace those which don't fit in the elevator. I don't know if we bought enough, but we bought as many as we thought would fit in the apartment. Tomorrow was going to be a day of bringing books upstairs, unpacking then going back for more. We'll wait to see if the fire is contained before we decide.

Life is certainly interesting!