My week with the San Diego Fires

Monday - On Monday morning we received a call from Brock S. He told us that a fire had started close to our home. We lived down the hill from the fire area, so we weren't in immediate danger. On Sunday the Santa Ana winds started to kick up with more vigor then I have seen in years. We turned on the TV to see if there were any reports on the fires. At some point we gathered our stuff to get out at a moments notice. We also thought of the Taufa family. We called over to see if they heard the news and there was no answer. I walked over and gave them the news. I am sure they were wondering why I was knocking on their door at 4:00 AM.

We left our home and evacuated to the church building about 7:00. We watched the fires and smoke from there. The pictures below of the smoke were from the church building roof.

My Father in law and his wife stayed with us because their house was in the badly burned area.


This is what happens when the Santa Ana winds blow hard. Trees were down everywhere. These winds also brought in single digits humidity which made it perfect weather for fires.








This is a short crappy video of the of the area around my place after we went back home around 3:00 pm



Tuesday - This DVD player was a nice surprise on a gloomy week. The DHL guy knocked on our door and we had no idea what the package was. We got the DVD player for free from one of our credit card companies because of some promotion they had. We took the promotion three months ago so we completely forgot we were getting on. Good timing DHL guy!





Wednesday -
I went back to work today. At work I saw a blog post on Pcworld.com about a free flash drive. It showed up on Saturday...two free things on one week. Sweet!
http://blogs.pcworld.com/tipsandtweaks/archives/005758.html

This card was an early B-day card from my mother in law. Watch the video and you well see what it does. I thought the best way to use the card is to make a booty trap. I set up the card on the bathroom door next to where my in laws were sleeping. I figured that one them would get up in the middle of the night so I set it up to when they opened the door it would go off. The next morning I asked Dave if they got a bathroom surprise. He said that he got up at 3:00 am and got attacked by my booty trap. I was hoping that it would get his wife because her reaction would have been better but I will take what I can get.










Thursday -

Jamie went our for a girls night out. I figured that she would be home about 10:30 so I set her up with a card booty trap. When she got home I acted like I was asleep and when she walked into the bathroom she gasped when the card when off. She said she wasn't scared...but I think differently.

Friday -

This video is filmed down the road to Rancho Santa Fe from Escondido and in Rancho Bernardo.

**Note** The video is Divx so you may need to download the player. Also give it a few minutes to load. The video is not great but half way througth you can see some of the really bad burned areas.



Saturday -

The air quility improved enought over the week that we still had our trunk-or-treat. good times.







This is Brandon, Lianna, and Dean.

Rude Vader

No one calls me

I haven't received a call on my cell by anyone besides my wife in 10 days. I changed my message two weeks ago and finally my dad and brother called me and heard it. I am a loser and proud of it.

Spiritual Promptings For Friends, But Not Family

Through out my adult life I can remember many times when I was prompted to help a friend. Most times I would feel something inside me stirring that got my attention. Then some thought would come to me. The thought would some times come fast and others times it would come after some pondering. After the direction (thought) came, I would go to action and find someone in need and do what I could for them. I haven't had an experience like this for a few years until tonight. I was at priesthood session and I ran into an old friend for my old ward. He went on to say that a another friend named Randy just started to come back to church and he was asking about me. I was astonished to hear that he was asking about me because just a week ago I can distinctly remember walking up the stairs to my apartment getting a strong impression to call Randy. It wasn't a magical heavenly message. It was just a thought, but now that I look back I also remember the thought was a little stronger then other thoughts. I didn't do anything about it at the time. The thing that really got me to connect the dots was when my friend at priesthood said, "You must have made an impression on Randy because he was asking about you..." After he said that, it made sense to me why I had a random thought to call a friend I haven't seen in three plus years. I don't know about you, but I can't think of a better feeling than the one that comes to you when you realize that God was talking to you to help one of his children. The best feeling ever! I hope to find his number tomorrow to call him.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I have had this experience to help friends yet I can't remember a single time in the five years I have been married where I felt an impression like that. I am not asking for one. I just find it strange that it has never happened. I guess my family doesn't have a problem that a cell phone can't fix...Oh wait, I can remember one time when the spirit spoke to me about my family. Not a story I can tell you though.

So now that I just remembered an experience you may be asking yourself, "What was the point of this post?" And my answer is... I Don't Know! Have a good day.