Late fall.... aah

Step 1.... the colors peak:

Step 2.... 4 days later the colors are gone ;-).

Boys work, and girls work -- it turns out that the way to get girls to actually participate in yard clean-up duties is to give them POWER TOOLS!  Now I know, she's a power tool gal.  Can you see the grin?

There's also been some reading, some feline cuteness, and some mild torturing of cats... although she didn't seem really that tortured.

Fire and Smoke and Rain

It's raining.

13 days ago the Camp Fire started, and 12 days ago our air turned into smoke.  (Insert obligatory global warming vs. our Nitwit president rant here.)  This fire has been terrifying - it moved so fast, and has killed so many.  It is the deadliest California wildfire in history, currently at 83 confirmed dead, more than double the deaths of the runner up at 29.  It is also the first time that anyone remembers ever having 12 solid days in a row of unhealthy air, a "normal" fire gives us 1-3 days.  We managed to have the worst air quality in the world.  Obviously, our air issues are nothing compared to the horror happening up in  Butte County, but it really brings home the changes that global warming brings to our world.

Images from our 2 weeks:

Our greatest obsession:  the air quality maps from the air district, which we checked constantly, along with a few other choice web sites:

News reports 80% focused on air, and fire

A strange site for us - a garage filled with bikes in the middle of the school/work day.  Iain mostly took the city bus to school, and I drove Ria in.  William got some rides and sometimes took a shuttle bus.  My face mask, N95 quality, waiting at the back door for me to put on every time I left.

But, today it rained, so the map has changed.  We have green skies.  Grey really, filled with clouds, but around here we call it green air ;-).

Fall 2018

Some cats maximize their rotational features.

Other cats settle behind their wall of invisibility.  (She won't sit there without Sailor Bacon and Paddington Rockbottom III blocking the world's view.)

In addition to documenting cat sensibilities, this fall we did our annual Big Basin camping trip, but, uh, I didn't take many pictures this year, mostly just Hope sitting on Carla's lap as a commentary on how chilly that darn soil was.

Both boys are proven to have camped with, at minimum, Perrin... Ria and I, not so much ;-)

Finally, we had James come by again, with a different group of folks!