Some fire pictures

Before I flew out on Monday morning I snapped a few pictures. The first I took while I was at the airport, with the sun coming up. You can see the sky was basically orange. When we finally got in the air our plane flew out over the ocean and did a big left turn, coming back just North of the border near Chula Vista. In the pictures you can see some of the fires that were in and around the Potrero area. This was the "Harris Fire" that was being reported in the news.

The good news is that when I landed late last night, you couldn't really see many fires burning. From what I'm hearing on the news it sounds like there are still a few burning but they're not as out of control as they were before.

wind + fire = screwed.

Wow; my city is on fire. Well, fortunately not downtown where I am located but parts of the city are really hurting. I'll be back in San Diego tonight and I'll try and upload some pictures when I get a chance. When I flew out on Monday I tried to snap a few photos of the Harris/Potrero fire from the air. As for now, we're fine; I love my city. In case you haven't seen the Google map above, click on the link to get a better picture of where everything is happening.

pies and fires

I woke up this morning with one thing on my mind: pie. Nikos and I had talked about it for the last few weeks but never actually made the trip out to Julian. So when we woke up this morning without any real plans for the day, we jumped in the car and headed east.
We made it out to Julian in about an hour, had pie at Mom's and the Julian Pie Company, and then headed home. Julian is known for its apple orchards and apple pies, so we took the relatively safe route and tried a slice of the Apple Crisp at both places (Mom's was better). We also tried an Apple/Pumpkin slice that was kind of strange.

It was extremely windy and cold (about 55 degrees) in Julian and when we got back down to San Diego it was in the 70s, sunny and hot. We passed a few fire trucks that were flying down the back country roads on our return from Julian. When we got home we heard on the news that there were some enormous wild fires that had sparked up early in the morning and were burning just West of Julian. By the time the afternoon rolled around the smoke from the fires had drifted West to San Diego and the sky was quickly blanketed with a thick haze. Nikos took this picture just before sundown.

little italy festa

Sunday we walked around our neighborhood and checked out the Little Italy Festa. It was a pretty good time. There were sidewalk drawings (done w/pastels, not chalk), lots of Italian-food vendors, and lots of bad stereotypes. I really like our neighborhood.

Miramar Air Show

Yesterday Nikos and I went to the Miramar Air Show and it was awesome. I've been here for a few years and I've never actually been to the air show but after the Red Bull Air Run a few weeks ago, I decided we ought to go this year. I'm glad we did because it was everything I'd hoped it would be. We got to see a ton of cool stuff. Actually, I should clarify - we got to see, touch and even sit in a few planes. It was cool as hell. We got to see a Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) up close, along w/a Predator, an F-117 Nighthawk (stealth bomber), a bunch of F/A-18 hornets and some enormous planes (B-52, KC-130, C-17). I think the highlights for me were seeing a Harrier flying, seeing the JSF, and then watching the F-18's do all sorts of awesome maneuvers.

Oh, and what's better is that the whole time they're fly-overs they're playing Danzig, mixed with a bunch of uber-patriotic rock. It was like something out of Team America. At one point a bunch of marine helicopters (cobras) did these simulated "attacks" where they flew by really fast and then an explosive ordinance unit on the ground set off these huge explosions (to simulate rockets/bombs going off). It was actually very bizarre and kind of funny at the same time. It felt like a monster truck rally on steroids; it was meant to appeal to the most basic senses. Big explosions and rockets noise = a good time. That kind of thing.

In any event, it was awesome and I'm definitely going again next year. Here are a few more photos:
My friend Mike is flying one of these C-130's right now but he flies the gunship variant. This was a refueler.
This last photo is of an air team called the Patriots; it's basically made up of a bunch of ex-military pilots who fly L-39s.

halloween surprise

The conversation went like this:

"We need to clean up our diet."
"..okay."
"No really - we've been eating a lot of bad stuff recently so let's shake on it. We're going to clean up our diets."
"...okay."

This, of course, was prompted by the fact that we were on our way to the gym and needed to make a trip to the grocery store soon. Before we could hit up the gym we had to stop by the Post Office because the day before we received a notice that there were 2 packages waiting for us. When the postal worker came back to the front desk with the packages we both scratched our heads. Someone had sent us two enormous boxes we weren't expecting.

I was so eager to figure out what was inside that I opened up the one box while we were still in the Post Office. Our eyes lit up when we realized that Nikos' Mom had sent us a ton of Halloween stuff. We threw the boxes in the trunk and headed to the gym. When we got home we unpacked the boxes and it was like Christmas... but earlier and with a Halloween theme.
And wouldn't you know it - one of the boxes was filled with the largest bag of chocolate candy I have ever seen. Seriously - I bet half of the weight of that box was high fructose corn syrup.

So I did what any person with a chocolate addiction would have done. I ate about 20 pieces of chocolate and told Nikos we needed to clean up our diets and stop eating so much junk food.