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.

Here is a link to an LA Times article that shows pretty much what’s going on.  If you haven’t read about any of houses belonging to any of the celebs mentioned burning to the ground, you can figure we will have escaped.  Based on where the fire is now, it will have to burn through Rob Lowe’s, Michael Douglas’s, Jeff Bridges’ and Oprah’s houses before it gets to ours. Keep your fingers crossed.

As soon as all this calms down and things get back to normal – by tomorrow, I hope – I’ll catch up on all the comments.  I was getting ready to put up Gary’s answers to the questions when all this happened.  I’ll get them up as soon as I can.