I shouldn’t have been suprised to see it’s been a week since my last blog where I was kinda leaving some of you in a panic about these California fires.  Then after about three or four people poking me to find out if my house is in danger yet, and two of them taking my sarcasm uncomfortably, I thought … yeah … I should give an update.

Update is … I’m not in danger, the house isn’t in danger, the pup isn’t in danger.

Actually, for this go around, we never were.  The Creek Fire burning a couple miles from my house had too much to overcome to reach us.  A co-worker got sorta close, but her house was still pretty safe.  When I last blogged last Thursday it was actually nearly out, with just some hot spots they were letting go to do a natural burn-off.

Last week at this time, there were four fires burning in our area (and two more down in Riverside / San Diego counties).  Of all of them, only the massive Thomas Fire still burns, and is still only 30% contained.  The nearly 300,000 acre fire endangered Ventura, Santa Barbara, and Ojia; and while nearly a 100 houses were destroyed, no deaths were reported (not even the cute bunny saved in a viral video from last week).  It still threatens big avocado orchards in Santa Ynez but if they had a couple of days of predictable winds this will be squashed quickly.

While there are large swaths of people around the Thomas Fire still evacuated, for the vast majority of Southern Californians this fire season is nothing more than a minor inconvenience.  I had one day that getting home was tough, I had a bunch of ash on anything exposed to the outside, and my allergies were a bit of an issue … and I was pretty dang close to the fires, right?  Comparatively, this isn’t 12 inches of snow shutting down a city, or hurricanes driving entire coasts off to dry land, or realizing that your local football team is the Bears.  This is just another example to me of how good Los Angelenos are world-class complainers.

But I get it, y’all were concerned.  So the quick update.  I hadn’t updated because it was a pretty busy week for me – just not blog worthy.  Heavy push to get ready for the end of the year at work, a great weekend with friends, and crossing new ground in my writing effort.  You are getting this today because, well, I took the day off of work to watch a little movie tonight (here’s a spoiler … it includes a jedi, quite possibly the last one).

So in a nutshell … not dead … dog is fine … I get it.