I added some more photos of the fire at night:

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The view from the window this morning:

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If the trees start moving closer, avoid the guy named Macduff. It will only end badly for you.

BWAH! Since I started teaching good ol' Mackers this week, I'm finding this allusion especially amusing.

Sean, YIKES. Be safe, please.

For people who were thinking of getting flowers for mother's day,

Give her a slow-moving, undersea plant!

Give her a slow-moving, undersea plant!

My mother would love something like that. No, seriously!

Thanks for the link bon! I think I'll get the breast cancer ones for MIL, my mom always gets a donation in her name to Planned Parenthood or Ronald McDonald house.

If it's related to starfish, is it really a plant? Or does it just look like one?

Okay, fair point -- they *are* animals. But some have stalks that more or less keep them in place, and although the kind with stalks *can* move to avoid predators, they generally have never moved quickly....

UNTIL NOW!!!!

CAVEAT to the organic flowers thing. I got an error message, had to call customer service and leave a message for them to call me back. A friend had the same thing happen and she did get called back-- their website is slammed but they are still filling orders. So caveat emptor, peeps!

One last photo post.

Some morning after photos of Griffith Observatory:

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Aiee. I hope the air quality improves quickly. Simi was pretty nasty around their last wildfires, but we were nowhere as close as Allyson is to this last conflagration.

Stephanie, I'm sorry to hear about what happened, and hope you bounce back on all fronts as soon as possible.

I have weird bruising issues. Which is a given, I guess. On my right arm they're even weirder. It seems that instead of being visible on my arm bruises drain down to my hand where they proceed to be big, bright, ugly, and start off with tingling and may move onto pain if there's enough blood.

My knuckles have been red since the weekend, but at least you can see the actual knuckles now. The really horrible part is that the sides of my middle finger scream with pain to the touch.

So what do I poke during my last meeting? Enough pain to make me jump, and I do it twice.

After chastising myself I then go to hold a door open for someone while juggling hot tea and papers and the door handle slips right between same fingers.

Now my head hurts.

But I do have my crack-containing coffee cake muffin. I've downgraded myself to three a week, and will go down again to two next week.

It was just too much.

nothing to see here!