Twins!

So you're probably wondering where I've been for the last forever.  The truth is, I'm pregnant!  DS and I are expecting twins "January 18th".  Or 13th, as Friday's ultrasound tech mentioned to me for the first time after 6 appointments.  I have no idea.  I haven't been overly worried about their due date since twins pretty much always come by 38 weeks, on average around 36, and a decent percentage as early as 32.  We we're saying roughly this holiday season.

Two babies!  Horribly blurry photos!

Hooray!  We're so excited.  We're finally in the second trimester and feel like we can tell people.  There's always a chance something will happen before the 20th week, but the chances are much smaller now.  And we live less than 3 miles from the best neonatal hospital in the nation, so while preemies are a concern, I feel that we're in great hands.

Not being able to talk about something that has been basically occupying all my thoughts hasn't left much to write about.  I do think I left out a post or two because I got distracted, which I'll try to fill in later.  I've been sleeping and resting a lot.  Eating more than I thought possible.  Doing pretty well with the nausea thing once I figured out that I wasn't eating enough.

Now that I'm starting to feel a little more normal, it's strange to discover some new limitations.  The last two nights I've noticed an uncomfortable pressure if I lay too much on my stomach, which I knew was coming but is still a bummer since I sleep like that a lot.  Pregnancy pillow is on its way!  I have to be careful about my laptop too, because I lounge on the couch with it a lot, and the heat bothers me now.  Steps are like torture on my lungs and heart.  It's hard to believe that when I found out I was pregnant I was training for a 5k and running better than I ever have in my life.  (I walked that 5k...)  Now I'm tired if I walk too fast or too long.  *sigh*

Truthfully, pregnancy itself is totally lame.  I keep asking DS if they can be here already (he tells me he actually ordered that for me as a surprise, but it's on back order), or if I can borrow an 18 year old body for a while and that I promise to give it back afterwards.  But I'm still so excited for babies!!!  I can't wait :)  And I know there will be major adjustments, and lack of sleep, and all that stuff, but I am so ready to be blown away.

13w scan.  Baby A is the blob to the right; it wasn't feeling photogenic.

Bri's Kittens

My friend Bri just got new baby kittens.  They're just 11 weeks old, and SO ADORABLE!  I spent the afternoon following them around with my camera after giving them some of the toys my cats ignore.  They make me realize just how humongous my cats are.  I mean, Felix was the runt, and she's still 13 lbs.  No wonder people look at them like they're freaks of nature...

Anywho, I hope you're prepared for a cuteness onslaught.

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Sequoia National Forest

Camping in Sequoia.. mine and DS's last ditch effort to "see California" before moving out of the state.  Happily, we did not do this one alone, but had the pleasure of being with our Battlestar viewing crew.  We stayed at the Quaking Aspens campground, whose amenities include pit toilets and a spicket.  And surprisingly, I did just fine.  Who knew?  We enjoyed a campfire each night complete with dinner, s'mores, and jiffy pop.  We slept in tents, in sleeping bags, and woke up around 7am without alarms.  We hiked and hiked and hiked until I had a blister on my heel the size of an embedded golf ball...  But truly, it was all worth it.

We hiked the 1/2 mile, paved loop of the Trail of the 100 Giants.  Ran up to the top of Dome Rock to have lunch.  Did the 4.6 mile there-and-back trail to the Needles Lookout tower (which nearly gave DS a heart attack, but he still says it was worth the view).  And finally did maybe 1/3-1/2 of the 8.6 mile Freeman Creek Trail.  This is where my feet decided they had had enough, and DS says "How are you?"  To which I replied, "Done."  And with that, we all decided to eat our lunch and then hike back out to go home.

The follow photos do not even begin to do this place justice.  Seriously.  You should definitely go if you ever get the chance.

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Grand Canyon

DS's parents are RV'ing across the country, from their home in South Carolina, out to us in Santa Barbara, up to Yosemite, to Mt. Rushmore, down to visit family in St. Louis, and then back home.  All in all, a VERY long trip.  Since I'm 'retired' now, I decided to drive out to meet them at the Grand Canyon.  We stayed at the Grand Canyon Railway RV Park, and took their train from Williams, AZ up to the Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim.  We only had about three hours there, which turned out to be a bit too much as it was one of the few days it actually rains there.  I doubt their hoodie, sweater and poncho sales are ever higher...  Luckily, I had checked the weather before going and brought my own jacket.

Even without a ton of time to hike around, this was probably the most amazing thing I've ever seen.  There's just no way to describe how jaw dropping it is to walk up to the rim the first time and see the gaping hole.  I had no concept of its proportions, even after seeing it from the plane just weeks before.  It's up to 16 miles wide, 1 mile deep, and 277 miles long.  MILES!  It's just... indescribable.  I'm so glad his parents like me enough to have me stay with them all by myself :D

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ACK!

The fires have been appearing mild during the day, when the winds die down. By evening, the fire explodes with amazing speed. We drove back to Ventura today to pick up the improved car. By the time we got back, the fire had spread west. It's insane. The photo above is of the newest boundaries. It's far enough west now to include us, but not far enough south. The air at home smells strongly of smoke, and my eyes are burning like when my allergies are bad. It's raining ash.

Image by penner42 via Flickr

As of right now, we're supposed to be safe. Here's a photo from the tubes, because mine aren't great. Too much smoke.

Welcome to Santa Barbara

That's what I've been told by everyone I know the last two days. In fact, my friend Samantha made a point of calling me last night just to say that. The reason? We're having our first wildfire since our arrival. This is Samantha's third, and she's only been here a year. There aren't any wildfires to speak of where I grew up, so I did some research*.

For starters, the fire started on May 5 somewhere around 1:30 in the afternoon. The cause is under investigation still. From what I understand, wildfire "season" (I can't believe there's a season for this crap) starts a little later in the year. This is due in large part to the utter lack of rain that this area gets after March. See the graph I grabbed from weather.com for reference.

Of course, that won't mean much without a comparison, so here is the same graph for the town in Kentucky where I grew up.

The fire began in the Cathedral Peak area. To DS and I watching the news, the fire seemed more or less contained last night. We went to Japanese class, no one seemed panicked. On the way home, we could see flames for the first time in the dark. I went to work this morning thinking the fire was probably almost over.

A term we kept hearing on the news as a point of concern was "sundowner winds". We had no idea what that meant, so I looked it up. Here is an excerpt from a report by Gary Ryan of the Santa Maria Weather Service Office.

"Sundowners" [are] Santa Barbara's special version of the Santa Ana regime. Sundowners frequently occur in the late afternoon or evening hours - hence the name. Light sundowners create irregular rises in temperature downtown with gentle offshore breezes. Stronger sundowners, occurring two or three times a year, can create sharp temperature rises, local gale force winds, and significant weather-related problems. Rarely, probably about a half dozen times in a century, an "explosive" sundowner occurs. These extremely strong and hot winds present a dangerous weather situation. In these events, super heated air from the Santa Ynez Valley bursts across the Santa Ynez Mountains and onto the coastal plain, reaching gale force or higher speeds within the city. Dust storms occur, fires can race down the mountain slopes, and great stress is felt by the human population, by animals, and by plants.

I can tell you that last night, walking to Japanese, the dust in the wind was actually scratching my legs. Though I don't know that this is an "explosive" sundowner.

So as I said, I went to work this morning. At 1:45 this afternoon, I left work to drive 35 min south to Ventura to drop the car off for some work. I still didn't see anything too scary. Between 3 and 3:30, I started back north in my loaner car, and could see the smoke the moment I was on the highway.

I kept taking photos as I got closer, just clicking the shutter button without really looking since I was driving. Right as I was coming into Santa Barbara, I got this.

I drove through that mess. It was very creepy. With the sun shining down through the smoke, it reminded me of the lit tunnels that go under mountains back home. Not really what I want to feel like when it's actually sunny and cloudless out.

I missed my exit coming home because of the traffic and my fears of hurting the loaner car. So I went one exit down and then came back. While I was waiting on the overpass, I got this shot.

If you expand that photo, you should be able to see the insane traffic. It took me 10 minutes to go the 1 mile back to my exit.

In the time since I've been writing this, the mandatory evacuation area has expanded a few times. The fire has jumped its perimeter, and has now burned down its first actual structures. I'm a little freaked out, though everyone is telling me there is a very very low chance the fire would come here. This is based on the wind direction and the interstate being between us. However, the office where I work is now under evacuation warning (not yet in mandatory evacuation) and the winds are expected to pick up again tonight, as much as 70mph at times.

If you want to follow the fire, here are the two sites I've been checking:
KEYT News
County of Santa Barbara
Also, the CofSB site has a Google Map link that they've been updating periodically with the evacuation areas.

That map is also available for Google Earth, and I took the liberty of taking a screenshot for you. That yellow house is where we live. The darker shading is mandatory evacuation, and the lighter shading is the evacuation warning. We're 2.25 miles from the evacuation warning right now.

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*Please note: all information included here was found via internet searches and world of mouth. I do not claim to know what I'm talking about. Please visit the links I have provided for sources that do.