Please allow me to interject my feelings about Mother Nature

Tone deaf! Fury after millionaire CEO offers to pay 'any amount' for private firefighters to protect his Pacific Palisades mansion while area burns to the ground | Daily Mail Online

 

Welcome to the future.

 

My cousin managed a private elementary school (next door to the women's club) on the other side of Temescal Canyon Rd. from Pali High. (She got the kids and staff evacuated, turned off the gas, grabbed her laptop and passport and evacuated to the house she shares with her husband in Westlake.)

She lived on the campus during the week and we stayed with her when we visited in the summer of 2023. She lived for years in the OC but got an opportunity there and she loved it, said she'd never go back to the OC and after being there we could see why. We loved that area. And we had never seen a high school here with the kind of facilities that place has. We were definitely a long way from suburban Toronto. Really sad to hear what has happened to that area, restaurants and places we frequented and neighborhoods gone. My wife and I walked the canyon road to the beach and back three times, as much to prove we could still do it at our age as anything.

 

The images and stories coming out of the LA area are just devastating. I can’t comprehend.

 

The wind can really whip through there, it's less than a mile from the beach. I remember covering a football game at Pali in which a punt got caught in the wind and landed behind the punter.

 

It gets better two weeks. Orange Julius 2.0
will drop in and throw everyone paper towels.

 

Politicizing -- just heard an interview with Rick Caruso, the recent mayoral election loser, blasting the winner, Karen Bass. Caruso lives in the Palisades and two of his kids lost their houses. No preparation, firefighter budget cutbacks, the reservoir that feeds the fire hydrants is dry.
Just now, I'm seeing Randy Stoklos interviewed on the local ABC channel. Stoklos is among the top 5 all-time beach volleyball players (partner of Sinjin Smith), 65-year Palisades resident. He started crying while being interviewed. He said he is the only one who stayed in his neighborhood and he saved his house. He said he's lived through other fires and he believes that the only way to save your house is to stay and battle the fire yourself.

 

The view from an old friend's apartment:

 

North Alabama is going to get snow Friday. We're far enough South that all we'll get here is a freezing rain/sleet/snow mix. Good old fashioned ice storm. Hope an icy tree branch does not take out the power lines.

Good times.

 

I’d rather have the snow.