As I sit here in front of the television, staring bleary-eyed at the moving pictures, I can't help but wonder where yet another precious week of my life has gone. It's as if I went to bed on Monday night, and awoke this morning to Friday. Long hours at spent at work trying to tie up loose ends before I fly home in eight days time, combined with the sudden popularity of my flickr photostream (over 4000 views in four days and an average of nine messages to reply to each night) have caused my week to blur. I barely remember C2 leaving for Hawaii a few days ago, let alone what day he actually left, I struggle to recall the dance lesson that FilmChris gave to us the other night, and I can barely even tell you what I had for lunch today. But what I do know is that I have just one week left of pre-married life out here in California, and I do not want that time to go by in a hurry. There is so much I want to do and see before I disappear off home. Not to mention errands that have to be run. It amazes me how much time has flown since last October when we started to plan the wedding, and now here I am, the night before my bachelorette party, with the big event now just one month away. Sadly I don't think my life will be slowing down any time just yet, well, not until the second week of August at least, but when it does, I sure am looking forward to it. Oh wait, hang on just a sec, we are in July now, right?

Please also see my entry from yesterday.
My heart goes out to anyone in the South Lake Tahoe area, I hope you are all safe.

But yes, some of my pictures were shown on CNN. How exciting is this?! According to another friend of mine, they were also shown on KRON4, a local channel to the San Francisco Bay Area. Here is one of the pictures they showed. I was even mentioned by name.

Click HERE to see the other photos they showed.

*edit* they were also shown on CBS13!

As we were sitting in our campsite on Sunday morning, me nursing a much needed jar-beaker of Starbucks mocha from the cooler box, I happily started to think about all the things that I could blog about from our camping trip to Lake Tahoe. I thought maybe I could write about how within five minutes of sitting by the campfire, our stress just melted away, or the moment we realised we had forgotten to turn the car lights off and managed to drain the battery and had to call for a jump, or how we watched with awe as tri-athletes crossed the finish line after racing for five-and-a-half hours (were they crazy?), or how amazingly blue the lake was, or about the insanely delicious gourmet campfire fish tacos that we made the night before we left…

But nothing prepared us for what we would encounter on the last day… In the afternoon, we decided to visit Vikingsholm (one of the mansion houses just off Highway 89, in Emerald Bay).

We first noticed the fire at around 3.15pm or so, and at this stage it was a plume of white smoke in the sky that looked like low cloud. We were on the trail to see the Eagle Falls waterfall which is at the bottom of Emerald Bay, about a mile down from the parking lot. From where we were, we could only tell that it was a forest fire because we could see where it was coming from. Had we not seen the source of the smoke, it would have just looked like clouds. But within about 20-30 minutes or so, the plume started to turn dirty yellow and brown. It was clearly spreading fast. The layer of smoke was starting to reach out over the lake.

As we walked back up the mile-long path back to the car up the path overlooking Emerald Bay, it looked like there were multiple fires, rather than just one. As we climbed, we could also hear the sirens of the fire trucks.

Because we weren't familiar with the scale of the mountains, we couldn't work out where the fire was- whether it was a smaller fire close by, or one giant fire miles and miles away. But as we drove down Highway 89 toward South Lake, it soon became clear that it was all happening just a couple of mountains away. There were a couple of really clear vantage points as the road ascended up the coastline, especially round by the entrance to the Emerald Bay campground, and from here you could see the bright orange furnace of the flames. We passed a couple of other campgrounds on the way, and we could see a lot of people were packing up and leaving as there was a line to get out of the campground. In the campground itself, people were standing around talking, obviously deciding what to do, and you could see in the distance the billows of smoke rising above the ridge at the back of the campground. We carried on heading south.

We got to the "Y" in South Lake Tahoe at around 4.30. You could see the smoke in the air, and the whole place smelt of burning wood (like a campfire, it wasn't unpleasant). Clods of ash started falling on our windshield, and the light was very dim.

Overhead, helicopters were flying back and forth, scooping up giant buckets of water to dump on the blaze.

There were a lot of worried people standing in parking lots on their cellphones. We continued on down Highway 89, attempting to tune into local radio stations for word of what was happening. We were fortunate that we wouldn't come up against any road closures to keep us from coming home, and it rapidly became apparent thereafter that were part of a large-scale evacuation from the area. Thereafter, I basically stuck my camera lens out of the window and kept my finger on the shutter all the time, documenting our surreal journey home. I've posted below a couple of my favourites, but you can see are a lot more by clicking HERE

After we turned onto Highway 50, the road was clear, but we rounded a ridge and lost sight of the main fire. The only glimpses we got were a plume of smoke in the rear view mirrors, which trigger-happy me of course photographed! There were also a lot of fire trucks that whizzed by.

The final roadblock at the end of the set was at Pollock Pines 17 miles away from South Lake Tahoe, and they were stopping people heading toward the city. So basically, they were letting everyone out, but no-body in. All in all, it only took us an extra hour and a half-to-two hours to get home. And luckily for us, we were able to get home, and home for us is in a place that isn't about to be engulfed by flames and taken away from us without our will. My heart goes out to anyone who is feeling a fire-related loss right now. We can only hope that the hard working fire crews are able to get this inferno under control, and that life in South Lake Tahoe can at least attempt to get back to normal.

After a long drive, we finally made it back a couple of hours ago….more details to follow as I'm faaaaar to tired and hungry to write anything tonight, and things like taking a bath are far higher on my list of priorities right now (do you blame me??). There are also a lot more pictures to follow once they've finished uploading, but here are a couple to give you an idea of how our afternoon panned out… Just to give you a point of reference, the first pic was taken at about 3.30pm this afternoon after the Angora forest fire had been blazing for about an hour, and was about 10 acres in size. It's clearly already in three parcels at this stage.

The second pic was taken at around 6pm as we were evacuating down Highway 89 from South Lake Tahoe. According to radio reports, the fire was several hundred acres in extent and had destroyed about 12 houses. And the smell of campfire was everywhere.

OK, so I should say one thing first so that you know what you’re getting into when you read this post, but I shall say it loudly and clearly that this is going to be a wedding-related post. I try as hard as I can to not post about my forthcoming nuptials as much as possible because a) the thought of my wedding which I’m flying home for in just 20 short days makes my stomach tie in knots and makes me short of breath (yes, there’s lots still to do), so I don’t write about it for selfish reasons; and b) I appreciate that it’s probably not really that interesting to anyone else (I know hearing about other people’s weddings bores me rigid), so being the selfless and considerate blogging soul that I am, I have attempted to spare you the boring details. Aren’t I just the nicest person in the blogosphere? So I really don’t blame you if you want to stop reading now, as there’s simply no skirting around the issue here, as the whole reason that we went to Michigan was wedding related…..you see, my suuuHUUPER nice future in-laws wanted to throw me a wedding shower, and quite frankly, what person in their right mind would say no to that? So very late on Thursday night, 11.15pm to be exact, SoonToBeMrNin and I boarded a plane, and red-eyed our weary selves toward Michigan for the weekend to hang with his fam.

The trip involved a stop-over in Chicago for a welcome coffee break…

…before we boarded the smallest, tiniest, teensiest, weensiest commercial flight puddle-jumper plane ever that I was surprised didn’t actually have turbo prop engines…

We arrived the next day at about 8am, and spent the rest of the morning sleeping off the journey in the spare room. I should point out that this was quite a step up from last time we went (Thanksgiving last year) when we weren’t even allowed to sleep in the same room as each other (hellooooo, we’ve been officially living with each other for the past 18 months, and long-distance cohabiting for the past five years…). But although we were allowed to share the same night air this time, we certainly weren’t allowed to share the same bed, so we were on individual sleeping mattresses a whole foot apart (hellooooo, we’ve been officially living with each other for the past 18 months, and long-distance cohabiting for the past five years…). Let’s just say that Western Michigan is an extremely moral place to live. My shower the next day was so exciting! We got some awesome presents, I was amazed at how generous people were. I’m ashamed to admit that I didn’t really know anyone there, but they were mainly SoonToBeMrNin’s relatives, which is why I made him come along too, making it into a couple’s shower. Bless his heart, he played along with it well and even managed to do his share of squealing with delight at the sight of new china and glassware. And oh boy, the look on his face when we got the wooden tray (of course the not-ice-tea that was in his little lavendar dixie cup had nothing to do with it, I’m sure).

I accidentallymanaged to drop a bit of a bomb when I explained to them how my field of research was climate over the past 45,000 years (the majority of the attendees were likely creationists), but I managed to drop an even bigger bomb by revealing that SoonToBeMrNin and I had been living together for the past 18 months (I did mention that it was a moral place to live!), but I don’t think they held that against me. At least I hope not. I think they found it entertaining as I lived up so much to the liberal stereotype of a californian. Hehehe.

In fact, we got so many presents that it prompted the menfolk to gather around to discuss how we should get them home.

We actually ended up going back to Pottery Barn and explaining the situation, and they offered to ship everything back for us at a nominal cost. Cool huh? I think I’ll register with them each time I fly anywhere in the continental US that might involve receiving gifts. You can’t get much better than that!!

After that, SoonToMeMrNin’s brother and his wife took us golfing (they rock, they are a living, breathing, walking example of living a non-West-Michigan life within West Michigan. They eat donuts on a Sunday morning, and they let us share a bed when we visit them, what more do I need to say?).

And my nephew-to-be attempted to give me a lesson…

I actually wasn’t that bad for a beginner…check out my swing, and look at the lift that I got on the ball! Not bad, eh? He must be a god teacher. Or clearly I must be a complete natural.

Meanwhile, SoonToBeMrNin decided to goof around and show off, trying to prove that he was by far the coolest uncle to have ever walked the planet…

And of course my nephew-to-be decided to prove also that he was the coolest nephew to ever walk the planet…

But BY FAR the absolute most exciting thing of all about the weekend (aside from being showered with gifts and being the center of attention the entire time we were there) was the fact that there were FIREFLIES! Check them out, I’d never seen them before, and there were just SO MANY! Seriously, nothing can out-cool the awesomness of little bugs that shine little lanterns out of their backsides.

That’s actually my nephew-to-be in the photo above, diving fearlessly into the unknown with a jamjar trying to catch them. It doesn’t show in the photo as I’ve learnt how to use my camera and can change the exposure setting, but it was actually PITCH BLACK and there was a pond down there too and you couldn’t see at all where you were walking…let alone what you were diving into with full force after the bugs. Fearless, that’s what I said, he was FEARLESS. Ahhh, youth…

But anyway we had a thoroughly nice time. Clearly we should go back there more often as I fear that his parents are beginning to forget what he looks like in real life, as evidenced by the XXXL t-shirt that they got him from a vacation they went on a couple of months ago. I mean I know he’s not what you’d call a spindly beanpole….but XXXL? Of course, he was really pleased that they got him something, he wore it, he was happy, they were happy, and everything was right in the world.

And we made a mental note to travel to Michigan more often

We live close to the ghetto. Shady people from the ghetto like to hang out at the local gas station late at night. Shady people from the ghetto who like to hang out at the gas station late at night are probably some of the scariest people you can meet in America. That makes our gas station near the ghetto one of the scariest gas stations in America. Especially at night. But we're ok, we live five minutes up the road. Shady people from the ghetto don't like to hang where we live. It's a safer place, but there's no gas station.