Happy Halloween!

Pumpkin carving!

I don't think I've carved a pumpkin since.... 6th grade?

Can you guess what this is?

Looks much better lighted up!

Puss'n'Boots from Shrek

Halloween at Stratagene

Apparently, every year the company welcomes the Halloween spirit with costume contests, baking contests, and pumpkin carving contests. The Tech Service Department gets really into it, whereas the rest of the company doesn't have as much fun. Gee, I definitely found the right group for me!

Technical Services represent!

back row: Kevin, Caroline, Mike, Owen. front row: me, Marta, Solange. Not shown: Al and Virginia Kevin as a watermelon (the seeds were my idea)
Banana-mana Owen + Coco
Mike, a TAB enthusiast (apparently a reference to an episode of the Sarah Silverman show?)
Caroline as a witch. Don't cross her or else!

She's our manager, and this is the scariest picture they've ever gotten out of her ever! Me as a scarecrow. Those hay bales came in handy. :)
Marta as a Zookeeper with her monkey, Annica.
Our crazy internationals in town for Stratagene University:

Punk rock fairy Claudia from Belgium, Japanese Princess Fumiko, and Witch Bharti from the UK Yet another witch, Cinda... she takes care of all of us...
Costume contest and Bake off
Pumpkin carving contest. Apparently, it's usually a battle between TS and R&D for this contest, but neither group had the time this Halloween. Next year!

This was my first Halloween in ages (over 10 years?) passing out candy to kids. Awww, they were too cute! Driving home, I stopped by Costco to get my candy (yeah, yeah, I'm a slacker and saved it for last minute). As I was driving into my neighborhood, I saw my 8-year-old neighbor and his friend trick or treating. It was only 5pm! My neighbor recognized my car. I saw him point to it, and then he started RUNNING (with arms flapping and flailing) to my house. It was hilarious....

The rest of the evening were a parade of tiny little kids (most came up to my knee or thigh) who would knock on my door because they're too small to reach the doorbell. So cute....

Homecoming

The San Diego wildfires began on Sunday, October 21st. Our region was under mandatory evacuation as of Monday morning. We packed up both cars, parked mine at my office parking garage, and maneuvered around in Dave's. We spent the first day at a motel in Pacific Beach, exhausted from a day of adrenaline and very little sleep (it was difficult to sleep through the howling winds on Sunday). The smoke from the fires were so strong, you could smell it all over San Diego county.

Since there wasn't much for us to do, we both opted to go to work for the rest of the week. On Tuesday, Dave spent half the day seeing patients. My office was closed, but it was a good place to use the internet and catch up with friends and family. We spent that evening at our friend Joe's place.

On Wednesday and Thursday, we lodged at our good friend Neill's apartment. He was away in Argentina, and his apartment management were very... um... unhelpful in giving us access to his apartment. They insisted that Neill find a photocopier and fax machine in some remote part of Argentina to help us out. He managed to do it and we were supremely grateful. It was comforting to stay someplace a bit more familiar.

Although our evac orders were not lifted yet, we decided to drive to our neighborhood on Wednesday evening to check if the road blocks were gone and if we could access our home.

Sweet sweet intact home
Many trees had no chance against the strong winds on Monday and Tuesday
Remnants of the hay bale fires
Surviving hay bales with the scorched hillsides in the backdrop

Unfortunately, the winds stripped many of our plants.

Our poor naked wisteria

Poor naked raspberry/blackberry bush

Poor naked grape vinesOne of many poor metal poles
We quickly watered all our plants as they were parched from the dry Santa Ana winds. We didn't stay at the home as the evac orders weren't officially lifted (but we did notice several of our neighbors moved back). Besides, the air quality was foul. I was having coughing fits all week long.

Thursday evening, Dave and I both went home to do some cleaning. We decided to stay at Neill's one more night, since it was just too ash-y inside the house for us.

On Friday, I left work early to do a good chunk of cleaning as we were moving back home!

Some views on the drive back:

Smoke cloud hanging over inland North County
Scorched hills neighboring 4S Ranch, note the burnt ground next to the road. This spot is less than a mile from our home. Saturday morning, we explored around to survey the damage.
Another view of the hills. We drove up there and saw that the fires came REALLY close to the structures. We're so grateful that everything was spared. Remants of the hay bales again. The remaining ones had been removed.

Yet another view of the hills. We were really lucky. The fire swarmed the hillsides surrounding our community, but didn't come down to the homes. Supposedly, they got as close as 20 yards to some condos near us....
Rancho Bernardo was one of the regions that got hit HARD from the fires. This was the area that made the national news. Yep, the same place that Schwarzenegger and Bush visited.When the news channels listed addresses affected, I had recognized several of the street names and realized that this part of RB was only 2-3 miles northeast of our home. We turned on one street, Duenda, to a quick drive. Saw over 10 destroyed homes on ONE street. It was heart-wrenching.

The right side of the green car was melted.
Damaged apt complex. When my friend moved to SD about a year ago, this was one of the apartment complexes that they looked at.
Charred trees along the streets
Right next to these trees is where I used to play Ultimate pick-up

National Guard presence
right next to I-15
Evidence of fires along the freeway... you can see this on both sides!

A Good Day

Dave found out his results!

... and although our evac orders haven't been lifted, we drove by to see if we could get into our neighborhood. Our house is fine!

Evacuation Pictures

Not really in the mood to write much.

Hard to believe that the Witch Creek Fire has spread so far!

Showing affected regions of Rancho Bernardo and Poway. Unfortunately, our house is in the red area.
Pictures from the mandatory evacuation Monday morning:
Sunrise + Smoke

After dropping off my car in a safe area, we decided to go back and grab a few more important things:

The park where the Pumpkin Festival took place on Saturday. They cleaned everything up except for the hay bales. Only 2 blocks from our house.
Hurricane-like winds.
Last image of our house/neighborhood.