The day starts off just fine.  The skies are blue, the air is clear.  Give it a few hours.

There are a lot of jokes about life in California’s Central Valley, most of them (okay, all of them) aren’t really nice.  They typically center around calling this area the armpit of California.  Hey, it’s a DRY heat, thank you very much!

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Don’t attempt to adjust your screen resolution, that was the color of the sky when I took this picture.

We do have one very big problem, and there’s not a darned thing we can do about it, other than move (not happening).  We are surrounded by mountains.  Beautiful, lovely mountains filled with majestic trees.  And they catch on fire.  And the smoke stays.  And stays.

These skies will return.  Someday.

So what to do?  Stay inside.  Really, that’s all we can do.  Make sure there are good air filters on the AC.  I like to think of it as a forced opportunity to catch up on the odds and ends inside that I typically put off when I go play in my garden.  Or do some reading.  Maybe write blog posts about how bad the air is.  Stuff like that.