The fire in Montecito

The fire in/near Santa Barbara and Montecito has us
concerned for Alyssum who is in the hills near there and for
our friends who live in Montecito. As of this writing
(11:15 AM MST, 11-14-08 the fire is not where they are.
Robert got the Santa Barbara fire department map and with
Mapquest we found Alyssum. At this time she is well to the
west of the fire and Bud's home is somewhat south and east
of the fire. The fire is still not under control so we'll
be watching and waiting to be sure they are all OK.

The rest of the news of this week is pretty insignifigant in
comparison.

Ariel was here for the day on Tuesday, Veterans' day. We
stayed inside most of the day. She asked if we could bake
cookies so, of course we could and did. We made butterscotch
and chocolate chip cookies using half of each kind. The cookies
came out well and Ariel did all the measuring and mixing except
for the last bit of stiriing in the chips. The dough was very
stiff which made the mixing quite difficult. We ended up spending a
couple of hours at the east Boulder Rec Center where she
played and swam. She met a boy and his father whom she
followed around for much of that time, sliding and just
having a good time in the water. The father, realizing he
had a good thing going with Ariel happily looking after the
boy who was a couple of years younger than she, left the
water after the first hour. When Carl came to pick her
up he was spotted by the father and it turned out he works
with Carl at Info-crossing.

Last night Robert and I went to the Dairy Center (the olds
Watts/Hardy dairy building which has been refurbished as
a theater and art center. The play was "Fat Pig" which
has been running off-Broadway for a long time. The locals
did a good job. It was fun and funny dispite the fact that
making fun of a fat person also made me very uncomfortable.

Yesterday was windy and followed by a snow fall of about an
inch. We wish it were more! The sun is out now and the
snow rapidly melting. Hopefully, it will help our well
produce more.