Randomness

California is burning. Or at least that's how it looked from the airplane coming back from Arizona. This is a view from somewhere between Phoenix and San Francisco, looking south toward the enormous fires in Southern Cal. It looks like clouds in this small thumbnail image, but look at it in full resolution; you can see the smoke billowing up from the forested mountains below. I'd heard about these fires only by watching CNN at Sky Harbor while waiting for my flight home. That's how out-of-touch I'd been while visiting family in the Middle-of-Nowhere, AZ.

I hope damage is minimal and nobody is seriously hurt.

And on the subject of Arizona, I flew over there for a couple days and got to meet my niece's daughters. (They're a military family and currently live overseas, so, I'd never met them.) I belive that they'd be called my Grand-nieces. I don't know. I do know it makes me a great uncle, which, in turn, makes my brother a grandfather, which makes me feel old. But the kids were adorable. Here's a shot of me giving Elena, my youngest grand-niece a meal at the local hot-spot for family fun: Walmart. What a sad comment on affairs; the fun place to go and hang out in small, rural towns is a giant, globally exploitative retail behemoth.

We did have a lovely lunch at a local, very brightly colored Mexican restaurant. Mmmm... Yummy Sonoran-style Mexican food. It's the one kind of food that I haven't found in San Francisco. It's one thing I really miss about Arizona. Mmmm.

I got to see a bunch of friends I hadn't seen in years while I was in Arizona. The International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival was going on, and it was founded, well, kind of by me. Not really by me, but I was a founding member of the Phoenix Film Foundation, which hosts the IHSFFF as well as the ever-more-impressive Phoenix Film Festival. I also got to meet one of my favorite science fiction icon actors -- Claudia Christian. For those of you who don't know who she is, she played Susan Ivanova on Babylon 5, and she's awesome! She was also really quite nice. There are better pictures of her, and one of me with her, but they're on my friend's camera, and he hasn't sent them to me yet.... The guy in the picture with Claudia here is some movie reviewer in Phoenix.... He was nice, but hey, this was Claudia. I got to show her an Applesauce Promosode, and she even signed a picture for Paul. Fun time. When I get the better pictures, I'll post them.

That's it for now. I still haven't recovered from the trip, actually. Tired I am. Yes.