Right now, there are an estimated 842 wildfires burning in California. All of them are mostly in the northern part of the state, which is definitely unusual; the southernmost fire is burning in Monterey. There have been about 6,000 lightning strikes, and apparently these strikes are responsible for most of the fires. At the moment I don’t have the numbers for how much damage has been done, nor how many lives have been lost, homes destroyed, but I’m sure they’re too high for comfort.

Really, though, this blog is all about me, me, me. So I’ll mention that just because there are no fires very close to where we are and we’re not in a whole lot of direct danger from them, we still get the smoke, because we’re roughly in the middle of several of them. The sky ranges from a lovely gray to a beige-ish sort of brown, which makes me think it has a healthy tan to it. The Sacramento Air Quality Board has issued a health warning for the area which roughly translates to, "If you’re asthmatic, don’t even think about stepping foot outside, let alone breathe." Still, it’s hard to keep the air from coming inside, and even though I have the air conditioner running, my lungs still ache, my throat is sore, and my eyes are burning.

And since I’m in my own blog here, I get to wonder whether anyone has suffered as much as I have because of these fires? Well, probably a lot of people are suffering a lot more, and my heart and prayers go out to them; still, though, I really don’t like living on my inhaler like this. It’s just annoying.