Solstice, Part 2

I forgot one of the main reasons I blogged yesterday.

After five years of calling and begging and emailing the phone company, we are so excited to announce that we will have DSL, starting this week. We have, literally, been on the waiting list for five years. What this means for all of you, is that if you call us now, and we are online, we will be able to answer the phone....so you don't have to keep calling and calling while we tie up the phone line playing Bookworm or doing family history. the modem is supposed to be here today or tomorrow.

the other thing I forgot to tell you about was the wildfires. After 4 excessively wet years, we are having a somewhat dry month. People are so used to it being soking wet that they are not using proper precautions with burn piles and such and we have had three wildfires this week. One was on the next street over from us. It was the first one and they had little bombers and big bombers and the helicopter with the water bag. That was all exciting as they flew over our house. At one point, when the fire was first starting, the helicopter was looking for a place to fill the water bag, and he spent some time hovering over our pond trying to decide if it was deep enough to use (it is only 1 foot deep and full of grasses now, so it wasn't enough). then at bedtime another plane flew over low and we went out to see what it was and we looked up and here was something floating out of the plane - they dropped 8 smoke jumpers and then their gear. It was not that serious a fire - it never broke 3 acres- and Alicia could hear the jumpers late at night laughing and talking amongst themselves. It was basically just a practice.

so we started with a 3 acre fire, then one broke out half-way between here and Homer, and it burned about 40 acres, I think. then last night one broke east of ninilchik, where Brian used to log and it went to 100 acres in less than 1/2 hour and just kept growing all night. We haven't heard how big it is yet today, but it was over 600 acres before we went to bed. It is so weird to hear helicopters and air planes flying back and forth. They had 3 blackhawk helicopters running around yesterday.

We are pretty protected here - we cleared out our dead trees years ago and keep a green barrier around the house. All these dumb people who have left the beetle killed trees just standing all over their property are the ones having the fires. (don't have to worry about lightning caused fires here - we don't have lightning, one of the few places on earth that doesn't).
Okay, that is all I think I forgot to tell you. Love, Charlotte