Fresh fruit. That's what got me through the murky days in 2002 when we had fires here and my a/c was deader than dead. Well, fruit and sporting a fashionable bag o'frozen peas on my head.

But citrus or anything slightly acidic did help cut the constant smokey flavor in my mouth.

It's not that the smell is getting in my mouth. It's that it's fucking with my ability to breathe. I'm so congested it's in the not funny range.

Em's all stuffed up, too. Poor thing.

Uhg. I'm sorry. I hope you get rains/ wonderfully effective firefights soon.

I've only run into truly bad air once and it was just nasty (in Prague, in April. When my nasty smoking habit made breathing easier because I could chainsmoke through A FILTER. Otherwise it hurt and I started wheezing and gagging.)

When I spent any amount of time down by the river, I'd return with my clothing embedded with coal ash and coughing up very nasty things.

As the map cycles through today's Air Quality, notice the big orange dot that doesn't go away? Right over our house. At least at work, it's better.

Yeah, downtown wasn't so bad today. Hot, but the air wasn't bad.

Downtown got bad at like 10:00 AM but cleared up eventually, according the map. The map is oddly fun. Look at the orange grow....look at it clear.

First day of the inversion (Prague's problem) my friend grossly said "I didn't know I could produce snot that color." And then threw up in the wastebasket.

Us idiot smokers were a wee bit better off.

I'm happy to be home, and may spend the weekend as close to the ocean as I can get.

Also, the Seventh picture in the photo gallery of this article is gorgeous. The first ~15 pictures rock. In a creepy End of the World way.