Correction on a news item - turns out that Josh and Jen didn't get deployed here after all; they were called in but their team never got sent. That's a relief, though I'm kind of curious why they didn't end up going. My sister said something about California crews having a chip on their shoulder about Oregon crews - wonder why? Then again, Oregonians tend to have a chip on their shoulders about Californians in general, especially those who move to Oregon, so I suppose turnabout is fair play.

Anyway, Happy Halloween, everyone. We had our Halloween party last weekend (it was a blast - I'll post pics as soon as I get them scanned), so I've had the weird sense all week that Halloween was already over, especially with the distractions of the fire. None the less, Halloween night it is - so my plan tonight is to dispense candy to whatever kids still have parents who will allow them to go door-to-door instead of cooping them up in some "safe" gymnasium party or whatever.

It makes me sad that less kids do neighborhood trick-or-treating anymore. I always felt such freedom and glee, dressing up and going out with my friends, all of us thrilled and just a little nervous at being outside after dark without an adult. I loved knocking on the doors of houses of neighbors who for the rest of the year were anonymous to us, with the full expectation that on this night a lit porch light meant that they'd not only greet us but give us free candy bars just for stopping by. We'd run into other kids and admire costumes, compare tips on who was giving out the best loot, etc. That night was the best night of the year, a night of transformation and magic, a time for little kids in crazy outfits to claim the streets and the night as their own.

So I'm super-glad that every year some kids do still show up on our doorstep, and as a result I'm overly generous with the candy. Indy loves it too, and in the past I've found it funny as hell when the little kids get a brief look of anxiety on their faces when she comes up to sniff their bags of loot, before they figure out she's cool - after all, what's Halloween without a wee bit of a scare? This year, though, given that she's getting older and has had some less than optimal interactions with kids this year (albeit under extreme circumstances that wouldn't be a factor in this case), I think I'll make more of an effort to keep her in the background. But I'll definitely be on duty for candy dispensing, just like my neighbors were for me, and hopefully as my neighbors will be for my kids someday.

Military helicopters have been flying back and forth past our facility all day. There's a big controversy over why they haven't been deployed in the battle to save key locations like Julian and Mount Palomar yet - the Cal. Dept. of Forestry is apparently claiming that their policies prevent them from allowing the military units to fly "their" fire until they certify the pilots and the equipment per CDF standards, make sure the communications equipment is compliant with CDF equipment, etc. The communications portion I can see, but it would seem a matter that could be resolved in hours, not days; as for the competency review... well, jumpin' Jebbus - do they really think military pilots and military-grade aircraft are going to be LESS competant than their own crews? Anyway, I heard that the flights today may have been evaluation flights, but hopefully they'll be on the lines soon. It's hard to know if the wheels of bureaucracy are actually turning slower than they could be, or if we're all just impatient for help and lacking understanding of the limitations involved in mobilizing crews.

As my sister told me earlier in the week, my nephew and his fiancee have apparently been deployed somewhere in SoCal (they work for a privately-owned firefighting contractor), but I'm not sure where. Having a relative out on the line somewhere makes me all the more keen to keep up with the news. It's hard to concentrate on work. Please think good thoughts for Josh and Jen!

The air in Kearny Mesa is much better today - it was almost odd to see a yellow sun in a blue sky today - but our office still smells terrible, and our dept. has been a Greek chorus of hacks and coughs.

I'm at home now - it's 2 pm, although it looks like twilight. When I got home at 12:30, the sun was a neon red polka-dot, as it was on Sunday; now, when I just went outside, it's pretty much disappeared completely behind the blanket of smoke above and around us. The tone of the light outside has gone from bright orange to burnt orange. We tried to take a picture of a neon-copper square of sunshine hitting our tile floor; it looked as if it were being filtered through stained glass. The air in the house smells better than at work, where the dusting of ash on the file cabinets made us suspicious of the air filtration system's efficacy. It's still not great, though; my head hurts and I'm coughing more.

Apparently Julian is at risk now - a 10-mile fire line is moving toward the town. I've always meant to drive up there some weekend, although Bill said I wouldn't miss much; still, I hope it is spared so I can still see it.

What a mess.

On Sunday morning I stumbled downstairs, all squinty with a hangover from our Halloween party the night before, to answer the door for some Sears guys that were there to deliver a dryer. As I looked out at our back porch, I saw the orange pumpkin lanterns we'd hung for the party - but noticed that the light all around them was orange too. Was I that hungover, that my bleary eyes were making the color from the lanterns bleed into the morning light? The sight was surreal, but I shook my head and moved on to let the delivery guys in through the garage.

As they brought in the dryer (wrong one as it turned out), one of them asked me if I knew the status of the fire. "What fire?" I asked. He looked at me in disbelief. "Have you not looked outside this morning?" "Um, well... we had a party last night, and..." I shrugged in embarrassment, and walked through the garage to our driveway. The sun was a dark red dot in the bruised-looking sky - very surreal, like a "Planet of the Apes" backdrop.

I spent the rest of the day watching news, wondering whether we'd end up having to leave our house as so many others did. At one point, news crews were filming from the east side of I-15 right across from the place where I work. Fire had jumped to the west side of the freeway and began to burn in Murphy Canyon, at the top of which our facility is located. The camera showed flames licking up the canyon right toward a white building that I suspected was the one we call Building 3 - then the thick smoke parted enough for me to see a couple of letters of our company logo on the wall facing the canyon, and I knew without a doubt that the Big R was at risk. Until this morning, I simply wasn't certain whether or not I had a place to work anymore. As it happened, I did, although the fire came so close to Building 3 that the bushes underneath my VP's window were burnt to a crisp. We lost a wooden deck in back of that building, and a neon sign on the back wall of our machine shop a block away was blistered and warped from the heat. Fire came within 5 feet of a number of hydrogen tanks that were sitting behind the building 3 - any closer and the tanks could have blown up and taken out half the structure. Still, the firefighters did their job outstandingly well, and they saved all of our buildings from harm. One of the business next to us lost some windows from the heat, but ours stayed intact. The fact that our facility is safe is a testament to the skill and dedication of our local fire crews, and I salute them. Buying back all this stuff would have been one grand bitch of a job.

Our house is fine, although there was a time on Sunday night that we were concerned about the Poway arm of the fire, which was being blown to the west toward us. We had heard that embers could be carried on the wind as far as 3-5 miles, and so we fretted about how the winds were blowing from Poway's direction down the canyon behind us and through the tops of the highly flammable 50- to 70-foot eucalyptus trees in our backyard. We have friends who live in Poway and were concerned for them as well. Thankfully the winds died down that night, though, and the fire stalled on the eastern edge of Poway, about 10 miles from our house. I think they lost about a dozen homes there. The north edge of the Scripps Ranch fire was about 10 miles from us as well, and the southern edge of the Paradise fire was about 20 miles away. Our yard and cars were covered in ash, and the air is hazy, but other than that all is well with us.

The real devastation is just east and northeast of where I work, in Scripps Ranch and Tierrasanta. We don't know if any of our coworkers had homes there yet, and we're also worrying about some of our staff who live in Ramona and the surrounding area. I feel so terrible for everyone who lost their homes. The stories on the news were heartbreaking. We stayed home yesterday, and I spent the whole day cleaning my house, my gratitude over having my house and belongings safe translating into a compulsion to care for them. I'd moved our important stuff - the storage boxes of letters and childhood miscellany and wedding mementos and pictures - to places where they could be grabbed quickly, and I'd collected my jewelry and some clothes and toiletries in a bag just in case. As I did so Sunday night, and again as I dusted and vacuumed and tidied on Monday, I kept thinking about how inconceivable I still found the prospect of losing these things, and yet how many hundreds of my neighbors only 10 miles away were facing that very reality. The only recurring nightmare I've had in my life has been that of having a fire approaching my house, and having to decide in a flash what I should take and what I have to leave behind. Facing the possibility of having to make those decisions in real life was one of the most surreal things I've ever felt - a strange deja vu from all those nights my mind had taken me through the process. While thankfully we didn't have to make those decisions after all, my heart breaks for everyone who did, and who came back to where their homes were and found that everything they managed to grab was everything they had left in the world.

I came into work today, but the smoke is still thick around the campus and it's a terribly unhealthy place to be. The filing cabinets are covered in a film of ash, so the filtration system could obviously be better. Hopefully the wind will bring some relief tomorrow so we can all get back to business, but right now I think we're all better off at home, closed up as much as we can be.

Anyway, think good thoughts for the people of San Diego - we're having some tough days down here.

Update on the unfortunate Roy Horn - turns out that about 1/4 of dude's skull is currently MIA from his head. Where is it, you may ask? Get this - it's No, really. Gestating his own brain-lid. That's just... I don't know what that is. Some people are just destined to have bizarre fucking lives, apparently.

And then there's the 6-year old boy in Florida with a left arm that was paralyzed after he was hit by a truck, which meant that, while he was sleeping the other night, he simply didn't realize that his pit bull puppy was eating his fingers. Kid should get someone to buy lottery tickets for him, because Fate owes him one heapin' slab of good luck after all this.

So I was bitching about a sore throat, and restless legs? Uh, yeah. Never mind...

Anyway, these little news items provide some perspective, but they aren't exactly helping to restore my appetite. I'll be back in those size 8's in no time!

/huge crawling heebie-jeebies

I think Jesus is punishing me for going around telling people He owes me money.

On Sunday I came down with a fever and ache, the progression of which has kept me semi-to-nonfunctional all week long. I've had pretty much no interest in food, which is an alien concept to me, good little eater that I generally am... It's a strange feeling - yet not entirely unwelcome, since I've lost at least 5 pounds since Sunday. The high temp, chills, and skull-splitting headache have thankfully subsided now, but yesterday a sore throat made its debut, and this morning's latest iteration is that of a classic chest cold - stuffy nose and the occasional deep-lunged cough. (I'm trying to pass off my gunked-up voice as "sultry", ala Lauren Bacall, but so far no one's buying it; Lauren Bacall with emphysema, they might more readily concede). I suspect the cold may be a separate bug that snuck in when the fever swung open the doors of my immune system and hung a big "Open for Business!" sign over them. Dragging ass into work on Monday and Wednesday, where two of my other coworkers are sporting their own colds, probably didn't help - but with one buyer out all week on paternity leave and work picking up in his absence, I just couldn't in good conscience be out more than the one day that was absolutely non-negotiable from my body's perspective. I slept for 15 hours on Tuesday, which I think is a personal record. Just as well, since on Tues. night the NyQuil/Theraflu combo in my bloodstream made me wake up every 20 minutes or so in a semi-panic from weird hallucinatory dreams (note to self - no more mixing streams with nighttime cold medications), and last night wasn't much better, since I had a bout of "restless legs" which I get from time to time, but which I really could've done without last night in particular. (Side note: no, I'm not suggesting that just because my legs do this, I have some "syndrome", as Wee was teasing me about last night; just that occasionally it happens and it's hard to explain the sensation very well to anyone who's never felt it, so it's kind of validating to know that others have had it too. Ever had it happen to you? Just curious...).

So, in sum, Tess has been a mess this week. I know that complaining about illness ranks right up there with housekeeping details and grocery lists in terms of sheer journalistic entertainment value for my reading audience. If you will, though, consider it more of a Public Service Announcement: Don't succumb to my wretched fate - if you haven't gotten a flu shot yet, go get one, and it wouldn't hurt to develop a little temporary OCD when it comes to handwashing this season. Save yourselves while you can!

OK, I admit to a certain level of shoe-related folly, as my recent entry about our trip to L.A. disclosed. However, there is one trend in women's footwear which has consistently eluded my efforts to understand and appreciate its merits. I simply cannot fathom the appeal of pointy toed shoes.

Now mind you, I think some tapering on the end of a woman's dress shoe is entirely reasonable, so that they don't look like they belong on the feet of a Disney character. However, the points I'm talking about are the extreme ones - they look like some bastard child of regular pumps and elf shoes that have had jinglebellectomies and been shellacked into sticking out flat and straight. Is it really just all about fooling the eye into believing that the foot inside is somehow more delicate for this extra inch or more of phallic-looking leather sticking out from the end of it? Or do the shoes simply appeal to the wearer's inner witch? I can definitely see the correlation in most of the women I see wearing them...

Today a sales rep came in wearing a pair of PTS's; I swear it appeared as if she had little black patent leather dildoes sticking off the ends of her feet. I wonder if she ever fantasizes about wielding those dangerous toe-lances of hers against recalcitrant buyers; I had this vision of her insisting on being referred to as "Mistress Win-Win Deal" as she can-canned into someone's can... "Yes, Mistress Win-Win, I definitely want to coordinate meetings for you with our engineers! Ouch! I'll even fetch coffee while you bat your sticky eyelashes at them and point out specifications with your blood-red acrylic talons! I LOVE the idea of giving your client last look in every competitive bidding war so that they're sure to get 100% of our business! Gah! I'll always make myself available to meet with you whenever you cold-call! I'm not worthy of the time you take out of your day to give me the chance to marinate in the miasma of your Obsession, so that by the time you leave, our office smells like it's been under attack by a pack of rabid Macy's salesclerks armed with atomizers the size of jerrycans! Forgive me the folly of not returning your calls! Mercy!"

I can't say these shoes are pointless, because of course they are nothing if not pointed. But they are most definitely, irredeemably, silly. Moreover, they're unhealthy. And just a little scary.

If you're in San Diego and have nothing to do tonight, you should consider heading down to the Ken to see "Bubba Ho-Tep", starring Bruce Campbell as Elvis (this is the last night it's playing there).

The premise is... well, one of the more original ones I've seen in a while. Its tagline: "The King of Rock Battles the King of the Dead". Campbell is spot-on as an elderly, pouchy, downtrodden Presley who lost his true identity via a "Prince and the Pauper" style switcheroo gone wrong. Ossie Davis costars as an elderly black man who insists he's JFK and helps Elvis battle the evil that's terrorizing their nursing home at night. If this sounds like your cup of tea humor-wise, or you liked any/all of Campbell's "Evil Dead" flicks, you'll probably want to see this.

"Don't make me use my stuff on ya, baby." Thangya vurry mudge.

So apparently, the election is shaking things up so much in California, the very earth is trembling in anticipation of the results... Either that or Skynet just sent its Ahnald doppelganger back to take over the reins once he wins the election.

I noticed that our building seemed to be vibrating as if we had a basement and someone was down there with a jackhammer. The sensation only lasted a few seconds, so I thought maybe it was just some maintenance guys doing work on the property. I looked outside to see if the leaves on the bushes were shaking the way they did during the last quake I felt here, but couldn't tell. About 10 minutes later one of my coworkers told us the news.

Of course, this is California - if shit isn't falling off the shelves, it doesn't really even count.

In keeping with our recent habit of lurking near of the rich and famous, the Saturday before last we went to a book signing for Neal Stephenson, whose latest novel, "Quicksilver", just came out on 9/23 (three days later it was ranked #6 on Amazon's bestseller list).

The signing was at Mysterious Galaxy, which isn't a large store - so it was a little strange, in a good way, to see such a well-known person in such close quarters. NS mostly focused on answering audience questions - he said he'd felt that past readings were a little cumbersome given the nature of the book (lots of dialogue, he isn't very good at doing voices, etc.), and he preferred to cut to the chase and try to answer some questions that might come up during individual signings anyway. He strikes me as a profound introvert; intelligent and confident, just not particularly outgoing. Fair enough; it's not exactly an uncommon trait among authors. He just seemed like he wanted to be anywhere but on a book tour, and I felt a bit sorry for him. Still, he seemed to honestly respect the people there and their interest in his work, and he took part in the process as gamely as he could.

One interesting bit of trivia which came up was that he wrote the entire 944-page volume in longhand - using a fountain pen, no less. This book is only the first of a trilogy, which means he's knocked out something equivalent to 3,000 printed pages by hand over the past few years. Dude must be able to crush rocks with that hypertrophied mitt of his by now! Given that he's one of the pre-eminent names in modern techno-fiction, this fact was just surprising to hear - kind of like if Wee were to declare that he'd decided to correspond exclusively by snail mail instead of email.

A comment that I found even more interesting on a personal level, though, was a response to a question about how he'd changed as a writer over the course of his career. His reply led tangentially into the time when he'd first decided he wanted to be a writer, but realized that he had no idea how to go about it. After writing and rewriting a couple of initial pieces, he found himself getting bogged down in editing, trying in vain to untangle the unworkable bits from the good ones. Eventually, he realized that the best way to hone his skills was not to start with just one project and rework it to death without ever being able to declare it finished, but rather to heed the advice of Jerry Pournelle... "You must be prepared to write and throw away a million words of finished material". In other words, just write for the sake of practice, as well as you can, but don't expect it to necessarily be your Great American Novel/short story/article. Determine what worked and what didn't work in what you wrote, and why, and apply what you learned toward the next effort. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I've read similar advice from other writers; but because writing has been on my mind recently, I was struck by the fact that someone whose writing and intelligence I admire so much had had a very similar sense of "How do I go about this?" when he began as I do now, and that his solution - essentially, practice makes perfect - was at once so simplistic and so logical. I guess it's always strange when an internal question you overanalyze to the degree of becoming a psychological proof leads to a solution that's so basic that it is, in fact, a cliche... Still, understanding why in specific the cliche rings true is useful.

A few people have told me that I "should be a writer", by which I suppose they mean someone who writes things for compensation. I'm flattered, and I appreciate the encouragement. At the same time, I lack the strength of their conviction. As someone who actively avoids ventures that might result in failure or rejection (I couldn't even sell Girl Scout cookies successfully), I'm a little scared of investing energy and desire into writing something with the goal of having it published, only to find that I don't make the cut. Do I need that kind of angst? And always I'm aware of the flaws in my writing from which I can't seem to wean myself - my tendency toward overly stilted phrases, incredibly long sentences, overuse of adjectives and ellipses and semicolons. I read the work of people, including other journallers, whose writing I admire and I can't help but be humbled because my writing doesn't seem as fluid or vivid or funny or personable as theirs. It's easy to become insecure and wonder what people think when they read what I write. Am I coming off as well as I think I am? Will anyone make fun of how I phrased something, or think I'm trying too hard, or used some ten-dollar word because I want to sound all intellectual and superliterate, when actually I'm more often trying not to use a big word when a diminutive one will suffice? (heh) Is this entry itself not in fact the most boring navel-gazing wad of words I've ever written, and probably something better kept to myself - and as a corrolary, will I seem to be fishing for more validation by posting it anyway? I'm not, honestly. But is it weird to say that? Etc, etc, ad nauseum.

Beyond the mechanics of writing, though, an even bigger source of challenge to me is that of the creative element - how to come up with and develop solid, interesting, original ideas for stories to write. I keep scraps of inspiration in my mind, a bag of mixed patterns, none of which seem to yield sufficient material to make anything useful once I examine them. Is this due to an attention deficit, or just sheer lack of imagination? Sadly, the strongest inspiration I've had for a story in a while came from my difficult jury service. But I wonder if I have nearly enough skill and stamina to write a story that would help explain to people the intellectual and emotional challenges that led to the decision I had to make. I should probably make some notes now for memory's sake, and set them aside - and then just work on my million words until I come to a place where I can sit down and tell that story, or another one, and actually feel like it's worthy.

Although I struggle with the details, I guess I've finally admitted that the nagging compulsion to write has grown in me over the past few years, and having this journal has helped satisfy that urge a little. (And in that sentence lies the final proof that this has become, irredeemably, a meta-entry.) Updating Tessnews is a painless way to practice using words, albeit it in a nonfictional format. I think I've benefitted from the practice; God knows I've written more here over the past year than I probably had the previous 5 years combined. I think I'm getting OK at putting words together. Not great. But better than I was.

Anyway, this went from being a story about seeing Neal Stephenson to an exercise in journalistic onanism. If I keep it up, I might go blind. Or get hairy fingertips. Something.

Right, so enough of that. In conclusion, seeing one of my favorite authors really rocked. And, as a bonus, what he said inspired me a little and got me doing some thinking about the process of writing. So we'll see where that goes.

So I'm following the news about with more interest than I should admit…

I have to say that I personally would never have ever paid $110 to peruse the pair of plasticine Prussians prancing about with their pigmentless predatory pussies. (Alliteration! Brilliant! Thank you.) Still, the spectacle of Roy's plight is sparking my curiosity in a way that the actual show never did. Is such macabre interest the long-distance equivalent of rubbernecking at the crash site? Yeah, maybe. Still, it's undeniably quite a drama. If this is the end of his performing career (or life) and of the show, one must grant that while the accidental finale was horrible, it was also luridly, almost absurdly, appropriate... The ultimate cat tamer, attacked in the middle of his own birthday gala performance by one of his most trusted tigers and literally dragged offstage in the beast's jaws like a gazelle. Was für ein Ende! I can't help but feel like maybe the showman in Roy would be gratified at the spectacle of it all - the reports of him gasping one last plea of "Don't kill the cat!" as he was rushed to the ambulance; crowds of fans and fellow performers - including the likes of Penn and Teller and Lance Burton - holding vigils outside the hospital; the ongoing suspense of "Will he pull through or not?"

The economic impact of the show's closure is significant too. Say what you will about the ethics or the asthetics of their show, or their eccentric lifestyle – Siegfried and Roy are undeniably a Las Vegas institution, and their act one of the most lucrative and longest-lasting in the city's history. The sudden and tragic circumstance of the show's closure is the biggest tremor to rock Sin City in a while. I can only imagine the way the town must have been buzzing like a bat-whacked hive on Friday night as the news rippled out onto the Strip and into the casinos. Needless to say, the Mirage's bottom line just rolled craps. I'd be curious to know just what type of insurance they have for this type of contingency – you know they must have hedged their bets pretty extensively given the type of show it is and the amount of revenue involved. Still, I'm sure Rolaids have become the most popular buffet item over at Mirage HQ today…

Anyway, I'm rooting for the tight-faced little liontamer. After all, the best stories are still those with happy endings.