It's for my health

Have you seen the studies by Spanish scientists that say beer is better than water? Well, it's better after exercise anyway. Beer replaces lost calories and helps prevent dehydration. Oh, and those tiny bubbles even help quench thirst.

I'm in love. What a better way to motivate me to walk the dogs?

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More promising

Last night the news shifted to a less menacing tone. The winds are coming off the ocean now instead of from the hot, dry desert. The smoke was still heavy in the air and ash was covering my black shirt like a nice, thick layer of dandruff.

I was out and about getting the news on the street from my neighbors. Even though the air was not safe to breathe, everyone was sort of wandering out of their houses to talk to other people. While chatting to my neighbor we were watching an adorable hummingbird flitting about. He would dart from the feeder to a branch, then zip around the yard and back again. Sympathetically my neighbor exclaimed, "I wish I could get tiny dust masks for all these little birds!"

This little guy needs one too!

Everyone has been carefully navigating the yucky ash and soot, well everyone except Lola and Henry. They were just happy I let them outside for more than 30 seconds.

This morning the sky seems more promising than it has in days. I can see shadows on the ground and the sun is not an eerie sight.

I don't know if things are really any better, as we have not turned on the news today. I know many of the fires continue to rage out of control, and my cousins in Orange County may need to evacuate by this evening. We would be happy to take them in to our home if need be, but there are no south bound freeways open! Southern California, especially San Diego, may be sunnier because of wind direction but not because the threat of devastation is over.

Not quite in the clear

Yesterday was a stressful, eerie day. We had our evacuated refugees with us all day and we were all wondering what would happen next. Will they still have a house? Will our house be in danger? When will we be able to go outside and breathe fresh air? We were all pent up inside the house watching the never-ending news reports. The sky was orange and ash was beginning to accumulate on the patio and plants.

Getting out of the house became the top priority. Marsha and Don have some friends in San Clemente and they promised they had clean air to breathe. Around 4:30pm we hopped in the car to head north. Thomas had work to do so he stayed behind, really he had the house, TV and dogs all to himself.

The air did not clear as quickly as I thought it would. The sun was behind enormous black smoke clouds for nearly all of the 20 miles up the coast. Shining through the clouds was a big pink fireball that reflected hot on a gray ocean. Unfortunately by the time we arrived in San Clemente the fire clouds had joined us hiding the sun behind growing fingers of smoke.

The moon was fighting to stay in the sky.

We took photos and tried to enjoy every last ounce of daylight and oxygen.

We were just relaxing and trying to let our minds escape the stress put on us by the fires, until Thomas called. His report: a kid in our neighborhood, apparently without a brain, snuck down to the canyon behind our house and lit a fire. A FIRE! THE KID LIT A FIRE NEXT TO OUR HOUSE! AT THE BASE OF A EUCALYPTUS TREE! Honestly, what kind of idiot does something like this? There are countless fires burning all over Southern California, especially our county, and this seventeen year old kid decides it would be a good idea to start a new one!

Luckily for us, our neighbors were outside and happened to see him doing this. They yelled at him, he ran off. Our neighbors called the fire department and thankfully there was a truck to come put the fire out. I'm surprised they had a rapidly available truck and that all the trucks weren't on the front lines of the major fires. The neighbors were quickly spraying the fire with garden hoses, but Thomas said that just within a matter of minutes the flames were quite high and growing. The police and fire department arrived shortly after and extinguished the rest of the fire. Hopefully somebody filed a police report!

So really there was no escaping the reality of the fires last night. It didn't leave our minds for a second. Between the smell in the air and the other refugees sitting behind me at dinner, constantly on their cellphone asking about Rancho Santa Fe conditions, the conversation never steered fully away from the devastation.

After dinner we hit the road, even though we wanted to leave the house we were all anxious to get back home. Halfway through our drive, in the middle of desolate Camp Pendelton, ash began raining down. High on a hill rising up from the freeway was a new fire and fresh flames licking the night sky. Marsha snapped a few pictures from the backseat and we kept on our way. We made it home safely, sat down and started watching the news again.

We were just about ready to head to bed when we heard that the evacuation notice for Marsha and Don's neighborhood and been lifted! Within a half an hour they had all their displaced belongings back in the car and were apprehensively on their way home. Their house and surrounding area did not sustain any damage from the fire!

The Witch Creek, Rice Canyon and Camp Pendelton fires are still burning today. We have hot weather and some sun, but the smoke continues to lay heavily on the horizon. The fires are not more than 15% contained, so we are not in the clear yet. That news will hopefully come soon.

A call to arms (pun intended)

The City of Philadelphia is in the midst of a homicide crisis. The murder rate increased nearly seven percent from 2005 to 2006, and the deaths in 2007 are trending to top 2006. A whopping 90% of the deaths are results of handguns. This led my favorite design professor to devise an anti-violence poster campaign to hang in bus shelters around the city.

With the campaign, designed pro bono, Frank Baseman wanted to bring in-your-face-attention to the growing murder rate and rampant handgun possession taking Philadelphia by storm.

After raising donations from local donors and businesses, the campaign was ready to hit the streets. Philadelphia thought otherwise. A mid-level government officer deemed the campaign too "intimidating," refusing to let it run in the bus shelters. Because staring down the barrel of a 2D gun is much more frightening than the fact that the city has become one of the country's most deadly cities.

Since that absurd decision, the story has been picked up by the Philadelphia Inquirer and National Public Radio. Now the poster is reaching a broad audience but not the intended audience.

Philadelphia needs to wake up, stop worrying about posters being scary and start worrying why its streets are scary. Shouldn't they be figuring out why its citizens have such easy access to handguns?

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Read more:

AIGA: Where Is the (Brotherly) Love?

NPR: Anti-Crime Posters Shed Light on Philly's Problems

Philadelphia Inquirer: Needed: Sponsor for a message of peace
A display too lurid for Murder City?