We were at Disneyland today... we rode some rides we've never ridden (or at least I don't remember riding), mostly kiddie stuff, we wandered around, and I got to watch the crows. I think the crows are my favorite thing about Disneyland. There are an awful lot of them there, and they're such big, beautiful, intelligent birds -- social creatures, you know, but not to the extent of their larger cousins the ravens. Once, years back, I saw at Disneyland a murder of crows so large, they would have succeeded at murder had they set their minds to it. I mean, well over a hundred of the birds, gathered in an empty corner of the parking lot, as well as all over the air above. It was an awesome sight, and sound! Today, they were rambunctious, probably due to the impending storm. Great fun to watch. The storm didn't really hit until we were on the way home... and then, at about 10:45 up here in the High Desert, it started to snow. My wife pulled me out of the shower with an ecstatic announcement: "It's snowing, hurry up, come on!" It's been a couple of years since it snowed…

So it's been a while since I've written much -- since the fires settled down, anyway. I guess I don't have the urge to do reportage, or whatever it was I was doing during that week. So my new magazine is out there. I'm hoping (hint) that some folks will contribute fiction to it for the next issue -- I'd like to reach a point before very long where months go by without a story by yours truly is in there. It's not that I don't want to write -- it's that more people will come to the site if there's a range of writers. I'm not interested in making it a showcase for my own work. This is a poor-ass entry, I know. Mainly, I'm trying to keep in the habit.

We continue to await the hopefully not inevitable voluntary evacuation notice -- we're still several miles away from the front line of the fire, but the wind is pretty strong, so anything's possible. Those of you who might expect a call, we won't be calling until it's to let you we're leaving... if you don't hear from us, we're fine. I just heard that 90% of the homes in Julian, California, have been lost. Julian is a lovely little town in the high desert of San Diego County, where I had the pleasure of staying a few times. My thoughts go out to the Rockin' R Ranch...

I couldn't go to work today -- the freeways leading down the hill are closed. The two fires I've been watching all week have merged into one at the Cajon Pass, which is the local high altitude point between my home and the communities "down the hill." The fires in Southern California now stretch in a line (not unbroken) from Claremont to Riverside, and up to Arrowhead Lake and Big Bear. The wind is strong up here -- but as long as I see it blowing from the East, I'm less concerned than I might be. The Santa Ana winds that fuel the Southern California wildfires originate East of here, blow through my area, and funnel down through canyons and passes, picking up velocity and strength, before they dissipate over the Pacific Ocean. It's a hot wind. In the fifties, they called in the Red Wind, because when it blew, tempers would rise and blood would spill. Tens of thousands of acres have burned. Hundreds of homes have been lost. I've got about twenty miles or so between my house and the nearest fire line. Airports are shut down in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Ontario because they had to…