wildfires are (not) over yet

even though life for us and people we know has returned to normal (i have been back to work since thursday), the wildfires are still burning in the county. the harris fire is about 70% contained, and the witch fire almost 90%. there are still 3 other fires burning in the county, and since the Santa Ana winds are expected to pick up again within the next couple of days the fire department is still on heightened alert. i took the picture above last friday while driving towards the wild animal park. neighborhoods that have experienced damage from the fires are generally inaccessible by people not directly affiliated with those (home owners, security personnel, contractors).



one of our pumpkins withered away during the heat created by the Santa Ana winds over the last couple of weeks. i guess we started the carving too early. luckily, there are 2 more pumpkins out on the porch ready to be turned into jack o' lanterns. J enjoyed the halloween parade at his friend's house, along with all the good food and games. a good ending to a week that did not start that great at all.

Helpers at Qualcomm Stadium

The fires in San Diego are getting out of control. at least that's what we are hearing on radio and TV. the witch creek fire ('das Hexenbachfeuer') burned through many thousand of acres north of Rancho Bernardo, destroying many homes along its way. 300,000 people have been evacuated since last night from those areas, including Rancho Bernardo and Poway. no work, school, or kindergarten for any one of us today or tomorrow. M had to evacuate her home in Rancho Penasquitos and we took her in early this morning. late afternoon we gathered several cans of food, a blanket and a towel, and J picked out two of his stuffed animals to donate to the children that will be spending the night at Qualcomm stadium. we then drove down and dropped off our things, together with many other San Diegans who dropped of mountains of food, water and bedding. we all hope this will end soon.

Marble Run, Swingset, Fires and Insidious Pipes

We had an eventful weekend. Saturday morning we left for Campo in the East County to ride the pumpkin express. We were joined by J's friend O and his parents and grandma. We enjoyed the ride and also the pumpkin patch which was set up in the museum railroad's exhibition hall. J really enjoyed decorating his pumpkin. we took the scenic route 94 back to San Diego (Not that the drive out the I8 is not scenic). we were briefly considering camping out in a small town called Potrero, but luckily we did not. that night a large wildfire started in the area, fueled by the hot and dry Santa Ana winds that were blowing throughout Southern California since mid last week. We are watching the news as the events unfold, with 2 large fires burning in San Diego County, and many more in LA County.



Sunday was a day filled with work and play around the house, interrupted with a quick trip to the Y for swimming and lunch at Rubio's. i made some progress with the swing set, while Julian helped paint the ladder that we are adding to the set. He became a little overconfident when sticking his arms into the *telephone piping* his Papa was planning on adding to the swing set. when he realized that his arms got stuck and i was unable to pull them off, i feared for a minute that we would have to take him to the hospital to cut off the pipes, but luckily i remembered that we had used soapy water before to remove a ring. a couple cups of water and his arms slid out the pipes, although not without tears of desparation on J's end.

Pumpkin Patch

We had a lot of fun at the Pumpkin Patch this weekend. J rode a red wagon into the patch and picked out two - one will have the word 'BOO' carved out and the other will have a face. At the patch in Ramona, a small town just north of San Diego in the local mountains, they also had a petting zoo (mountain goats had their own little playground), a corn maze, a corn cannon and lots of different types of pumpkins and gourds on display. JK tried the corn cannon, which must have been quite fascinating to J since the next day he set up his own one in the backyard using a pen and a couple of sidewalk chalks for support. the other thing we picked up that day was a bale of hay (rather, straw) to use as stuffing material for our scare crow. After we had gotten back home J's friend A came over to help with making the scare crow (as well as tearing apart the bale and spreading the straw all over the backyard).

Project Pipeline

This family is keeping me busy with projects! Or is it just me trying to make most out of the sizable collection of woodworking tools i have amassed over the last few years? I am not sure, but i do know that Home Depot and Lowe's have been taking big bites out of my paycheck every month over the last 6 months or so. Maybe this explains our hole in the budget that C has been trying to fix desperately.

Besides the plexi glass easel and various repair projects at J's school i have been ordering supplies to rewire our phone lines, replace the station protector and add a DSL splitter to put an end to our spotty DSL service once and for all (thanks to 'linksys' there was always backup Internet service available), a small carry-on chalk board for J, and a swing set for J, of which you can see the the first 'A' taking on shape (2 more to go plus a 4x4 post on top and a ladder plus platform, and, if J gets his will, a zip line to one of our trees in the backyard).


The compost bin shown above had been my first big wood construction project (not counting the smaller crafts and cabinetry stuff like J's bed, stool, blackboard easel and doll house), and i learned a few lessons along the way: 1) always paint your work pieces before putting them together if you really want achieve good protection of the wood from the elements, even though this requires a lot more patience and takes quite a bit longer for the project to complete 2) always measure twice and _always_ use a framing square when putting the various pieces together. at that time i did not have a large enough square so i ended up using a metal frame i found in the shed, which worked OK then, however, i did screw up at least one right angle and the trained eye will be able to tell if they look at the bin in person.

what i am proud of is the fact that i got a $89 Ryobi contractor table saw to work for most of my projects (so far). a good table saw has a large table, an accurate miter gauge, a 60 teeth blade, extra material support for cross and rip cuts, as well as a motor that's powerful, quiet and without vibration. while there is nothing i can do about the vibrating, loud motor (except for wearing hearing protectors) or the inaccurate mite gauge (forget angle cuts completely, i figured out a workaround to do so-so 90 degree cuts by pushing the miter bar firmly against the miter slot while performing the cross cut), replacing the 24 tooth/10" standard blade with a 60 tooth/7 1/4" blade allows me make much smoother cuts. i also added a table extension to be able to rip longer boards without having them fall off the end of the table). to be fair, the rip fence works pretty well on this saw, although the range is limited to less than 10".
lesson learned: don't go with a $100 saw if you are planning to do any serious woodworking projects. $500 or more for a good cabinet saw is where you should start looking.

Massive School Cleanup

it should have been a 30 minute stopover at J's school today to deliver the plexi glass easel and hang up a dry eraser board. instead, we ended up spending 3 hours there, while looking for my keys that I had lost somewhere at the school a few days ago.

what happened was that I dropped off J Monday morning on my way to work, but as soon as we had entered the school Ms S was all over me, asking me to fix the plumbing in the kitchen. The weekend cleanup parents clogged up the kitchen sink and had not told anybody before school started again on Monday. Reluctantly, i agreed to take a quick look to see what needs to be done and subsequently called C, the maintenance coordinator, to do the actual fixing as i really had to get going because i was parked in one of the 10 min spots. Soon, i realized that my keys were gone and i could not remember where i had set them down. Did i put them on a table and some kid picked it up? did they get lost on the way in from the car? did they, somehow as C suggested, end up in the trash? patting down the kids did not bring the keys back, neither did a search outside, so i was forced to wait for C to arrive and hand me the spare keys. meanwhile, i had also gotten a parking ticket. not a good start into the week. Oh well.



anyway, while putting the last finishing touches on the easel, Chris turned the school upside down in search for my keys and in the process discovered a lot of junk in the kitchen area, a lot of which we ended up throwing out. inspired by her activities, i went through the tool shed, created a mental inventory list and threw out a bunch of broken brooms, rakes, tools, and other useless items. hopefully, our cleanup effort will help save the school (or at least make it easier for other people to find stuff and get around more easily). As always, J enjoyed playing with all the toys at the school, which for at least a few hours, all belonged to him.

These berries look so good - Mmmmm! J looks adorable in this picture, taken around July 18 while vacationing on 'the Farm'. It was one of the few moments during this 5 week trip were he seemed truly happy, besides the time he spent with his Mama and Papa in the Baby Therme in Lutzmannsburg. I could tell that the time in Austria was difficult for him as he did not speak much German at that time (He still does not speak much and it is really my fault for not taking the time to teach him more!). All three of us have pledged to work hard on his German over the next year so that by the time we go see our family in Austria again he'll he talking like a pro!