Thu, 07 Sep 2006
I havn’t bloged in a while (or is it "blogged"?) so here’s a bit of what’s been happening. A) Some friends of our came down from Vancover to stay with us for a bit over a week. So we did a lot of hiking, tubeing, gold panning, eating pizza, swimming in the pool (and the Bear River) and generally being happy but unproductive people. B) I drove down to San Diego with my wife last Friday so I could spend some time with her and also see some friends from the old neighborhood. I flew back on Tuesday just in time to drive home, get my guitar and mandolin and then get to work to teach my students. C) We’re dealing with a bit of a forrest fire problem right now. (Perhaps this should have been point A) There’s a huge fire about 30 miles away from us and I noticed it when I was teaching on Tuesday. I could see it from the theater where I work. At that time it was all the way across town and on the other side of the American River. Now, a few years ago we went through the San Diego Cedar Fire. That fire started about 40 miles away and it ended up burning down the fence in our back yard and nearly getting my workshop. So the 30 mile gap doesn’t sound quite so big any more. So far the only effect on us is that it really smells like smoke everywhere we go and it’s a bit hazy here. In fact, yesterday morning my cat was whining loudly trying to get my attention. Now normally, she would be meowing for me to get up and give her a drink of water from the faucet HOWEVER we have a problem with that (See point D) ). In any case, when she woke me up I realized that there was an overwhelming smell of smoke. THAT woke me up. I got dressed and went outside and there was quite a bit of smoke. In fact, there was a noticable haze between the house and the garage. I drove up to the top of the hill and looked around and the whole of the Bear River valley was full of brown smoke. Realize that the Bear river is on one side of our house but the fire was on the other. That is NOT good. I checked the TV and it turns out that it’s still all the Forrest Hill fire. On the TV they showed a helecopter shot of the Auburn valley and it was completly covered by smoke. Today it’s still hazy and smelly. Here’s a few photos of the area.
The fire started 3 days ago. It’s still a bit smokey in our backyard.
Looking towards the fire. Usually you can see all the way to the mountains around Lake Tahoe.
Looking north it’s slightly smokey but not nearly as bad as yesterday.
The view from the top of the hill above our house looking towards the Bear River. It’s pretty brown out there. D) Let’s talk about the water We got a notice stuck to our fence last week telling us to Start Boiling All Water Immediately! Apparently the testing of our water system showed the presence of e. coli. Now it’s not as bad or as gross as it sounds. We’re on a small water system with about 70 customers. Normally we have incredibly good tasting and very clean water. A system of wells get our water and then it goes to a water tank at the top of the hill. That insures that we have good water pressure. It turns out that 3 test about a quarter mile downstream from us came up positive for e. coli. Our water never tested bad. However, everyone had to be notified and we all have to drink bottled water until we get the new notification. It seems that somebody has a back flow valve that wasn’t functional and most likely their house water (specifically, from their toilet) flowed back into the system. There’s a back flow valve at the toilet and another one at the water meter. The one in the house has probably been bad for a long time. The one at the meter just went bad and that’s how it got into the water supply. Now they just have to to to every one of the 70 houses and test the backflow valves and find the culprit. Meanshile they’re putting larger doses of chlorine into the water supply to clean it up and we’re all doing the bottled water thing until we get the "all clear" notice. E) My internet connection and cable TV keep going out today. It makes me wonder if it’s related to the fire at all. Yesterday when the smoke was really bad the TV kept stuttering like a dirty DVD was playing. But it was happening on all channels, even the news. The smoke was probably messing up the signal to the cable company’s sattilite dish. But since it’s going on and off completly today it makes me wonder if the cable company office is anywhere near the fire. F) Guitar stuff. This is for all my students. It shows how important "those little dots" are.
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[/ramblings] department
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