Smoke on the water, air

Just a quick post today...
A week ago we were at the beach in Asilomar when we experienced the rare thunderstorm, and witnessed the lightning that caused the Big Sur fires. It was pretty surreal, actually. Neither of us had checked the weather - it was so sunny and hot we didn't see the need to. Within a few minutes of getting to the beach, we saw the thunderheads rolling our way via Carmel and another group moving off to the right towards Santa Cruz. 20 minutes later and we saw lightning streak down over the mountains and bay. Time to pack it in; Rory was sad to leave the beach but he was a little freaked by the storm, too. One of his quips was so good I had to post it to 'Grins and Giggles'.

One week later the fire (as well as the myriad other California fires) is still not under control. Worse, the smoke is thick in the Monterey Bay area. I thought I was getting sick before realizing it's just the smoke irritating my throat and sinuses. Myer and Rory both have coughs, and Matt was starting to feel sick, too. And then there's also the ash, a fine rain of it coming down (not so bad today) that lightly dusts the cars and our deck. Speaking of ash...

As a karmic aside, some of you know about the pesky, irrational neighbor we have and the battle of the leaves she is waging (briefly for those that don't: after living in the house for X number of years before we moved in, she has suddenly decided to blow and rake all the leaves from her side of the yard onto our driveway and front of property because they are "our" leaves). She was out washing her cars on Sunday and I got immense satisfaction from seeing a light dusting of ash on the cars after an hour. Heh heh.