Thursday, October 26, 2006

It’s raining ash

It’s called the “Esperanza fire”.

There is a fire not far from here (located near Cabazon, about 17 miles WNW of Palm Springs) that started late last night. The sky is almost completely covered with smoke, the sun appears red, and there are ashes falling from the sky.

It’s a chilly 54 degrees, too.

In other news, GDIL underwent a successful grafting operation (skin from her thigh to where her fingers used to be) in preparation for her new prosthetic fingers. According to Grandson, they have looked at several options, and they will be going with the more lifelike skin tone and texture (the fingers even have teeny-tiny little hairs on the backs). She will have more limited functionality than with the more mechanical versions, but since she is involved in fine detail work (being a Gemologist and Jewelry Designer) instead of heavy manual labor, she will be just fine.

She will still be wearing the Halo until about a week before Thanksgiving, with a few weeks of therapy to strengthen the unused neck muscles after that, but she will be back to normal before Christmas. (I use “normal” advisedly, of course, since she was crazy enough to marry into my family in the first place.)

UPDATE: this fire is getting worse. I don’t expect there to be any problem where we are, but it looks to have one of its three “fingers” headed this way, although still several miles away. If we are forced to evacuate, we’ll let you know.