New Fridge Happy Dance

 After all that effort of cleaning and re-cleaning after the fire evacuation, the Refrigerator of Doom has been replaced. It decided on New Year's Eve to stop being a refrigerator and just be a cabinet. Ahem. After two weeks of buying ice for our coolers and using a dorm fridge, the replacement was delivered last week. Halleleuia! Cue the Snoopy Happy Dance Music:

It was terribly exciting and honestly a little scary to have actual people in our house that aren't us. It's been quite a while because of the lockdown and all. The delivery guys were inside for less than 10 minutes. It's amazing how easy it is to move a refrigerator when you have the right tools and a team that knows what they're doing. Truly the most exciting thing to happen in months and months at our house, which says a lot about this era, doesn't it?

The water is good, and even better, the ice doesn't have that funky aftertaste that never really went away, so I'm really happy. And wow did I ever miss having ice water whenever I felt like it. That's how I drink most of my water during the day, and I think I was mildly dehydrated the last couple of weeks.

I'm not going to get into a big thing on planned obsolescence, but c'mon, that fridge didn't even make it to 5 years!! Having literal bells and whistles, well electronic songs at least, is not what we as consumers want or need. We want the big ticket item things that we buy to last. What a waste of metal and plastic and all the electronics that fridge was. It makes me agree even more with the premise of the Brave Little Toaster. 

We are feeling very lucky that we are in the position to be able to buy another appliance without a big problem, and to refill it with all the food we had to throw away. And that there was one available without a several month wait like there was right after the fire. Taking all this for granted has been a real eye opener for me. Fingers crossed that I'm not revisiting this subject in less than five years!

Now to figure out how to cut off the *(#*&%(#* plastic wrap without ruining the exterior.

Walk Walk Walk

 We walk in the morning.

 We walk all the time

 Up and down our very hilly street

We parade up and down the street

again and again

And again, every single day,

Sometimes twice

We are very very tired.

Signed, Meg

My Home Office

When it's not raining, I'm lucky enough to be able to say that this is my home office:

1. Comfy cushions - ✅
2. Charged up laptop (that is gets a better wifi connection outside than in for some reason?)✅
3. Cut up Cara Cara Orange- ✅
4. Nail Polish because I need some color on my toenails -✅
5. A beautiful day ✅✅✅✅✅✅

Will I get anything done? Well...that's a topic for another blog post I suppose.

Fire in the Valley

A big fire is going in my area in the Santa Cruz Mountains in Bonny Doon. This shows the smoke yesterday early evening around 5:30pm, the fire had only been going two hours. In the foreground is my chimney.
The smoke just billowed up so quickly, the fire is far away across the valley over the rural highway and over at least one ridge of mountains. The area hasn't had a fire in at least 100 years, so there is a lot to burn, and extremely steep mountain canyons to try and firefight in.
We're feeling a bit nervous as I'm sure you can understand. But that is how it goes in the urban/wild interface zone. We've been hearing the helicopters and fire-fighting planes all morning, I sure hope everyone involved is safe.
Luckily the wind has changed and the smoke is no longer coming this way, and is barely visible from my house this morning. But the fire evacuees are being directed to my son's middle school. Hitting too close to home!