A few years ago MD and I were in a product development meeting with a handful of thirty something people.  During a break, she and I were huddled together having our own little discussion about something when the meeting got started back up.  In an effort to get our attention, one of the other people said, ‘Hey, you two, we need to get going again.’

I looked up and said, ‘Sorry, we were just having fun fillin’ out the forms and playin’ with the pencils on the bench there.’

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Montecito fire (click to enlarge)

The fire in Santa Barbara/Montecito is finally pretty much controlled.  You can see from the photo I took above the giant scar the fire left on the hillside. Within this scar are over 100 houses burned to the ground. Our house is just to the right of where this picture ends.  As it turned out, we weren’t in any danger, but we didn’t know it when this all started.  The winds were howling with gusts of up to 70 miles per hour and driving the fire in our direction.  Suddenly, for whatever meteorological reason, the winds quit.  The fire then became terrain driven, which means basically that it started burning upward.  Which was fortunate for us and Oprah, since we both live sideways from the fire and not above it.

We have moved all our stuff back into the house and now have to get it back where it belongs.  And I’ve got to tend to this blog and get all the comments up.  But, now we have to leave to get down to LA for a screening of the movie FatHead.  We won’t get back until late tonight.

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Just a quick update to let everyone know what’s going on.  MD and I came back to Santa Barbara only to get caught up in the latest fire.  We evacuated our house in Montecito (a suburb of Santa Barbara) last night and have been holed up in a hotel with lousy internet service since.  It looks like the fire has been pretty much contained, but everyone is worried that the 70+ MPH winds that drove the fire last night will come back up tonight.

I took the photo at the top of this post last night at a friend’s house not far from ours.  He was being evacuated as well, so when I went to help, we could see these flames looming up on the hill right down the street from him.  I clambered up onto the top of the SUV we were using to move his stuff and took the photo.  As I was taking the photo, the police were going door to door getting people to leave.  Pretty scary stuff.

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Here is how we spent the 4th this year. MD’s singing group, the Santa Barbara Choral Society, always performs with the Santa Barbara Symphony at the free concert in the sunken gardens of the Santa Barbara courthouse. The rest of the fam and friends usually picnic (low-carb, of course) on the grounds and watch. In the above photo the SBCS sings (the symphony is in the back) their hearts out. MD (aka Nanny) is front row, third from the left in the light-colored jeans.

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I just got a copy of Dick Morris’s latest report concerning the differences between Bill’s remembrance of Hillary’s role in his presidency and Hillary’s remembrance of same. Turns out that Hillary remembers it a whole lot different than Bill does.

I always enjoy reading Morris’s reports on the Clinton years because he was right there in the thick of it, and so he knows whereof he speaks. It’s not speculation–it’s on-the-scene reporting. He was Bill’s eminence grise and was truly in the inner sanctum. Just as W turns to Rove, Bill turned to Dick Morris.

Morris regards Bill as a political genius who knew when to follow his own instincts (which were quite good) and when to listen to advice. And when he took the advice, he followed it to the letter. Morris regards Hillary as being a smart but personalityless harridan who caused no end of trouble.

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