So Santa Barbara is on fire. Well, actually it's Los Padres National Forest just outside of Goleta. From the street in front of my house you can look toward the mountains and watch the flames shooting up. The dark red goes up about 100 feet above the fire line at times. It's the definition of awesome. Not awesome as in some surfer-dude commentary but really awesome as in awe-inspiring. Kind of pretty yet terrifying. Perhaps that is what the face of god would look like.

Last night as I drove to a brew pub to meet some friends I saw the beginning of the fire and I saw the planes dropping water on it. By this afternoon it was raining ash on campus. I could see what almost looked like confetti flying by my 5th floor office window. It was weird. Sometimes when I start the grill outside I use newspaper under the grill chimney to get the charcoal going. The newspaper ash flies up a bit and it looks like newspaper -- it's whitish-gray and flaky. I always thought that was somehow distinctive about newspaper ash. Turns out that it's not. The ashes I was seeing from my office window were similar. Some were big and looked almost like moths and others were smaller. Walking outside with my black shirt on it looked like I had a serious case of dandruff!

After getting home from work (by way of Costco to buy kibble where their cart-fetching employees all had masks on due to the smoke in the air) the power went out. A friend is visiting and we (plus G) climbed into the car to go to a sushi place in SB. We got there and saw that the power there was out too. Then we proceeded to downtown SB where the traffic lights were also out and restaurants had their CLOSED signs displayed. We finally found a sushi place that was open and we ate there. When we got back on the 101 and headed back to Goleta, towards the fire, I was surprised that the lights were still off. You could tell from the 101 that the power was still out since there was none of the light noise that you normally have. It was eerie. We got off the 101 at our exit and saw the flames. They looked so close to our house! Cars were coming out of the street and we wondered if our area was being evacuated. All I could think about was the dogs. We got home and neighbors were outside. They told us not to panic (too late!) because people 2 miles closer to the fire were on "evacuation standby" or something like that and since those people were still in their homes, we had plenty of time. They predicted that we would not be evacuated this evening. They also told stories about the famous Painted Cave fire that was a LOT closer to our street and they weren't evacuated then either. So, not to worry. I guess. Still, I thought I should probably get things together that I would want to take (aside from the dogs).

How would we know if we were going to be evacuated? Our neighbors said that the county uses reverse-911 to call you. Well, that only works if you have a landline. AND if you have a phone that isn't a cordless phone because those have to have the base plugged in to have juice. So I plugged in that handy old princess phone. I am so glad to have that! But what about people who only have a cell phone? Our neighbors also said that if anyone gets the evacuation call that they would start beeping horns and knocking on doors.

The concept of evacuation is weird. I grew up in Tornado Alley. Well, not Kansas but the midwest. There is a season when you might get a twister but by the time you found out, you can't GO anywhere. You find the inner-most room of the house, you go into the basement.... But you don't take your stuff with you. You hope that the storm jumps over your house and that your stuff is still there waiting for you. But evacuation is a different feeling. You have time to plan and perhaps that time is a bit overwhelming.

That is when I realized that we have not transferred our renters' insurance since we moved to this house. G has been nagging me to do it; the insurance company has called as well. But I haven't wanted to deal with it. I think since part of me is seriously considering breaking up with Gary before classes start, I didn't want to renew the renters' insurance because it felt like just one more thing we'd have to UNdo. Also I wanted to update the values of different items because I have purchased more artwork and a little more jewelry and my computer is better now and with replacement cost insurance you want to state what things are worth, I think. Well, tonight as I looked around the house and thought of the big flatscreen TV Mom & Dad bought me for Christmas and the digital piano and the $1200 roadbike and the 1,000+ CDs and the cute new clothes I've bought and my shoe collection and my artist books and my artwork collected on trips and expensively framed.... I thought FUCK! I had to think of what I could fit in my Subaru with 2 labradors (still the most important) in case we were evacuated. And I had to face that my procrastination and my commitmentphobia (I'm even afraid to committing to no longer having a commitment!) might really cost me tens of thousands of $$. I can't even say I panicked. It was such a sinking feeling of acceptance that there was no panic.

But even if you did have insurance not everything is replaceable. What to take? Well, I grabbed some documents (my passport; the information for my 2007 taxes for which I filed an extension but still haven't done them; Shiva's pedigree) and some jewelry. I couldn't find my engagement ring (small diamonds -- only cost $500 or so when J bought it for me back in 1994? 1995?) or my wedding band (gold and platinum braid - $550 I think engraved inside with "mi amiga amada"). Why would I want those? Well, to pawn. But I couldn't find them by candlelight. No electricity, remember? I also figured I'd take the artist books and for artwork just the illuminated pages that I have. And my laptop. Bye bye Neoga (that's the name of my pretty yellow Cannondale roadbike and many other things. I also wondered if I would be charged for the library books (several that are interlibrary loans) that would be burned. I didn't want to waste valuable car space with them if I weren't going to be held liable.

It's pretty amazing what things you take for granted. Electricity is one. Even when you know that the power is off (it was off from 7pm-midnight), you still instinctively hit the light switch when you walk into a dark room. Time is another -- oh, I'll have time to deal with the insurance crap later. Clean air is another. Damn the smoke stings your eyes. I also usually have my camera and since we could watch the fire from our street (our neighbors kept insisting that it looked closer than it was cuz it's night) I thought I'd take a few photos. Well, I discovered my camera battery was dead and it's not like I could charge it! We also don't realize how much light noise there is. Standing outside on the streets with no streetlights and no lights coming from houses you could see so many stars. It was really pretty. I also heard the neighbors across the street playing guitar and it made me wish again that I had an acoustic piano because I could have entertained myself that way but not with my yamaha digital one. Nope. That one requires juice.

Well, we weren't evacuated. Not tonight. And the power did come back on. I'm hoping that tomorrow we can transfer the insurance to this place. And no, I still won't be re-estimating all the values because I won't have time. But maybe we can change that later. And we can separate out what's what all that later. Yes, it is something else to UNdo, but if everything goes up in flames, that is a bigger hassle. I just don't know with a raging wildfire (0% containment, yes you read that right ZERO PERCENT containment achieved all day) less than 5 miles from our house if Horace Mann is going to be willing to renew the lapsed policy. They might say no. And who could blame them.

It's late but I felt a bit amped up due to the freakiness of the night. I'm still a bit out-of-sorts. I'm wondering if the University is even open tomorrow. I had planned on taking a vacation day anyway but if the campus is closed, then I won't have to count it as a vacation day. I kind of doubt they will close though. And I'm not sure how they would let us know if they did close. I signed up for some campus alert system so I can get text messages on my cell phone if there is an emergency. But I don't have much faith in them. I remember the Tsunami training I had to go to after Banda Aceh was destroyed. The training? If you see the wave, it is too late. If there is a Tsunami warning, don't go toward the water. Really? Wow. Thanks. You want me to sign this form saying that I as "departmental safety representative" completed the Tsunami training? Ok. Now you can't be sued for not having trained me. Well, after that experience I don't have too much faith in what their emergency system will be.

I think the wind might have shifted. The smoke smell seems to have gotten worse. Plus the skunks who live in the hills are fleeing looking for safety and we all keep smelling skunks in the neighborhood. I'm tempted to go outside to see if the fire looks worse, if it seems closer. But I am hoping that the fact that we have power now is somehow A Good Sign. I mean, if the fire were getting closer, the power would be out. I don't know why that makes sense to me but it does.

I'm going to try to get some sleep. At least I'll shut my stinging eyes. I realize that I'm squinting as if that will let in less smoke.

The funny this is that my parents haven't called. They must not have turned on the news. Tomorrow AM they will see their Sarasota paper and when they see this story they are going to freak out. It's already after 2am my time so that means in as little as 2.5 hours (7:30am Sarasota time) my phone might ring. I guess I better try to sleep!