I came home today from work to find that there’s a wildfire going on about 10 miles from my house. I snapped a picture from my backyard. Its pretty big, so I’m not going to put it in line, but you can find it i28.tinypic.com/28l8lk4.jpg

Jeeze, it’s just not a good year for weather, is it?

Yeah. I live in Phoenix. The news said that the storm that recently passed here which was only a really small one cloud thunderhead, let go of a bolt of lightning and ignited a field of brush.

Newer picture...

i32.tinypic.com/2lnjp13.jpg

wow.. thats close.  We don’t have one that close.. but there is a circle of HUGE fires around where we live... the whole sky has been grey with ash falling for days now.  The sun looks like a bright orange in the sky and we can’t go outside with the kids as the air quality is so bad.  My two cars in the drive way are covered in ashes.  

thats crazy Dave..... is the fire under control?

No, they cant get to it. Its in a section of desert that has zero roads going to it.

on Fox news they just showed the fire and said they are evacuating 20 homes in the area.

Yeah, when I woke up this morning, the fire was for the most part died down. It had moved pretty significantly west overnight and is now sitting in the riverbed. (For those unfamiliar with Arizona, when we say riverbed, we mean a dry sandy patch of land where a river once was years and years ago. There’s no natural water here) Fire crews were able to get to it this morning around sunrise, but they’re evacuating some homes that could potentially be in the line of site of the fire just as a precautionary thing. Luckily it moved west where there isn’t much. Had the winds blown north, I would have been in trouble as well as a few thousand homes in our suburban sprawl.

Man, I saw a flash flood once while living in Apache Junction while at one of the campgrounds on the outskirts.  During the camping trip I caught one of those horned lizards, had a "jumping cactus" limb in my back, and stepped on one the next day- and on top of the one in my foot had a tarantula crawl across my foot while I couldn’t walk.. good times !  I was happy when my mom decided we should camp further up at Apache Lake.

lol... thats hilarious... that just goes to prove my theory that most times real life is funnier than any sitcom can ever hope to produce.

Those cactus can be mean. I remember when I first moved here, I went out 4 wheeling with a buddy of mine

and they told me to watch out for... they called them throwing cactus. I laughed and thought they were joking with me. Until I got assaulted!!