San Diego fires

We returned home to San Diego tonight where fires continue to burn around the city and county. These pictures were taken last night and early this morning by our friend Fergal with a zoom digital camera from his third-floor balcony less than a mile from my apartment and Rex's house.
They show the Harris fire which has been burning across the city's southern side.
Here is a map of San Diego County (click on it for a larger view). The red, orange and yellow dots are where fires have been burning. The yellow thumb tack in the middle of the city is located over my neighborhood. Rex's house is only a dozen blocks away. (If you have Google Earth on your computer, you can see the latest version of this map here.)

We're safe for now. The fires' advance toward the center of the city slowed tonight as the winds shifted, but it's impossible to say where the infernos will go next or how long they will continue to burn.
I shot these photos from the plane tonight as I flew across the the central part of San Diego County. I was sitting on the right side of the plane looking north toward the Witch Creek and McCoy fires. If you click on the first pic to blow it up you can make out the orange light of flames at the base of the largest plume of smoke rising from the mountains in the background.
This view is further west and the orange dot in the middle is a large fire visible through the thick layer of smoke.

I'll update my situation here as often as possible.

You can see Rex's postings on the fires on his blog here.

And for the very latest news about the disaster, go to The San Diego Union-Tribune's fire blog or its Web site at SignOnSanDiego.

It's all relative

In just four days I've managed to visit my parents, two sisters and their families, a great aunt, an uncle, two aunts and 11 cousins. Here I am with my mom (right) and two of her sisters who also happen to be Catholic nuns. I guess you can call them sisters squared.
My brother-in-law, twin sister, nephew, niece, mom and dad.
None of these people are related to me, but the handsome guy on the billboard is Cliff. The signs seemed to be everywhere in my hometown in southwestern Louisiana.

I went to high school with Cliff. We were both in the marching band - I think he played trombone. I remember him as a really nice guy with a playful sense of humor. At some point during high school he discovered Jesus. I guess he never got over it.

All good things must come to an end

We ended our night of LSU football with the Tiger Marching Band singing the Alma Mater acappella.

The game

Here we are in Tiger Stadium Saturday night watching LSU's nail-biting game with Auburn.
The Golden Band from Tigerland got things started. The stadium was packed with 92,600 fans.
The fronts of these t-shirts read "Auburn Sucks."Mike VI gets a big welcome from the student section. (Click on any pic to make it larger.)
Here come the Tigers!
It was a crazy game with LSU staging an exciting comeback in the fourth quarter to score the winning touchdown on the last play of the game.
We came. We yelled. We left exhausted.

Tiger pep rally

We got primed for the game by the Golden Band from Tigerland during the pep rally held by the Tiger Athletic Foundation a couple of hours before kickoff in the basketball arena located next to the football stadium.

Rex didn't seem too troubled by my enthusiasm.

Tailgating

I bumped into friends Harold and Scott while we roamed around campus Saturday afternoon before the LSU-Auburn football game. I know Harold from my days covering the Louisiana Public Service Commission, the agency that regulates power utilities. Scott was a business section intern at The Times-Picayune two years ago, and he returned to LSU this fall to attend law school.
Rex wanted to see the fancy new habitat that is home to Mike VI.

The weather couldn't have been better for a day of football - temps in the upper 70s, low humidity and crystal clear skies.
By mid-afternoon, the campus was packed with more than 100,000 fans, such as these Law School students who stayed true to ancient LSU tailgating traditions.
These fans had their hands full keeping up with cocktail orders.
It's amazing what you can do with a beer keg and 50 feet of plastic tubing.Another creative use for kegs. I'm not sure how this thing works . . .
But it produced these yummy-looking kabobs.
The parade ground in front of the Law School Building.
The Journalism Building where I attended classes in the late 1980s. It served as a temporary newsroom for The Times-Picayune staff when we evacuated to Baton Rouge after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans.

Down on the bayou

Our visit took an unexpected turn Friday after my cousin Victor died. So we headed south to Morgan City to join my dad's clan for the wake. To get there, we traveled for nearly two hours through sugar cane fields, past petrochemical plants and across the Mississippi River on the Sunshine Bridge.Rex was captivated by the scenery, the English of my Cajun cousins and the dinner we ate at Landry's Seafood House along Highway 70 in Pierre Part. Here, he's trying fried alligator for the first time.
Dad had a delicious plate of turtle sauce piquante. (That's my twin sister next to him.)
I had the seafood platter - fried catfish, shrimp and oysters. We all had the sweet potato fries - they were heavenly.

The other LA

We're in Louisiana for a week visiting family and going to LSU's game with Auburn. My mom, dad and I kicked things off with a pilgrimage to Mike VI's sprawling habitat on LSU's campus in Baton Rouge.
Mike, a 2-year-old Bengal-Siberian mix, is the university's newly crowned mascot, replacing Mike V who passed away last spring. He's a stunning creature in person. Already, he's as big as his predecessor, and he's expected to nearly double in size over the next few years.
This guy took care of Mike for the first two years of his life at a tiger rescue facility in Indiana. We happened to arrive at the habitat just as the guy was paying Mike his first visit since leaving Indiana two months ago.
Mike was able to pick him out from the 70 other people who were gathered around the viewing areas. They both seemed really happy to see each other.

The habitat is a huge enclosed green space with a waterfall, a pond and lush landscaping. It sits between Tiger Stadium and the Pete Maravich basketball arena.As we were leaving, we bumped into LSU Athletic Director (and legendary former baseball coach) Skip Bertman.

Biz trip to L.A.

I took the Amtrak Surfliner from San Diego to L.A. Monday to cover a meeting on cross-border health insurance.

I love taking this train. It cost as little as $50 (not much more than what you would spend on gas driving). It only takes three hours. And power outlets next to the seats let you use computers or charge phones during the trip.
The overcast weather pretty much ruined my view of the coastal towns and beaches along the route, but I was able to snap this pic of Angel Stadium in Anaheim.
City Hall in downtown L.A.
Caltrans' (California Department of Transportation) $165 million district building designed by Thom Mayne.
Home of the Los Angeles Times.
Little Tokyo . . .
Where I had a yummy lunch.The Japanese American National Museum.
The post office.
My multi-national snack on the return trip home. Beats airline pretzels.

Hitched in Houston

We traveled to the Lone Star state last weekend to celebrate the wedding of Russell, my best friend from back home, and his new wife Wendy. They actually got married in Australia a few weeks ago and had a big reception on Saturday at a bed and breakfast in Houston.
Here they are toasting each other.
And cutting the cake.

This is a story of enduring love. Russ and Wendy have been best friends for nearly 20 years. And though they had periods of romance together, they always had relationships with other people and never were a couple until two years ago.

I always knew they belonged together, but I just didn't know if they would end up that way.

They're both smart, playful, sophisticated and self-aware, and Wendy is a knockout. Russ couldn't have chosen a better mate.
Russ' mom, Joy (left), his sister-in-law and brother, Glenn.
More of the crowd at the reception, including several people from our little hometown in southwestern Louisiana.
Houston was muggy and rainy the whole weekend. On Sunday, we stopped for a drink at the Montrose Mining Company, my favorite bar in the city right in the heart of Houston's main gay neighborhood.
This is JR's, another gay bar, as seen from the Mining Company patio.