I'm still alive

Don't freak out- I'm still alive!! The fires have not touched PB at all. Thank you everyone for constantly calling, checking, texting, and emailing me over the past few days.

Sunday:
Sunday was a day unlike any other because mom and the Aunts were in town (I promise I will update the blog with pics and stories soon.) So we started off going to the Firehouse Restaurant, which I completely find ironic now,for breakfast. After stuffing ourselves with more food than any of us could eat we headed to shop a little bit on Garnet Street. A brief history on the Firehouse- it's a GREAT bar that overlooks the ocean but is located next to the firehouse. A few years ago the bar actually burned down. After shopping we then headed to the zoo. At some point in the afternoon mom made a comment about the sky and how it looked hazy.... my response: oh it's just smog. Good one Sarah, San Diego doesn't have smog! So needless to say we were clueless about the fires until later that night. In between dinner and the being at the zoo I talked to a friend and he notified me there were fires in the area. Still unconcerned I didn't really think about these.

Monday:
Needless to say everyone knows all about the fire I didn't really care to learn about. So, Monday rolls around. At that point the Today Show was talking about them, national news, and every radio station/ tv station alive was talking about the Souther California Fires. I still didn't take anytime to learn about them. I got up and went to work like usual- minus ALL of the traffic and actually made it to the office in 15 minutes. By that point I knew something was wrong. So I clicked on the radio and found out the fires were surrounding our office- not literally but almost. So we all sat around the office talking until 4 pm when we had a voluntary evacuation of our offices and surrounding areas. By this point two people in our office had evacuated their homes as well. We are still waiting to hear from one girl whether or not her house survived the fires.

It still is and was very ashy in the air. Everytime you walk outside you can feel the smoke you enhale and defiitely smell it. I believe it was Monday Denver was making fun of me. I sent out an email to the fam and said I just walked outside in my business suit and got ash all over it. So the question now is- if you have a black business suit on and you get black ash on it does it matter??

By Monday night my entire apartment smelled of the smoke- not to bad though. And then the biggest realization hit me, I haven't turned in my new updated insurance information, which includes my renters insurance. "Oh Shit" kept being repeated every 5 seconds. About this time was when all the phone calls started to come in from everyone. My friends back in Rancho Cucamonga called and offered me a place to stay at their condo if I needed to be evacuated. So, I formed a plan in my mind- if I have to evac tonight then I'm headed to Rancho to stay with Ryan and Cain. Great, i'm preplanning and prepared right? No. Completely wrong. You see this freakin Fire is only 110 feet high in some spots, meaning, it jumped and blocked 2 interstates. The two interstates that take you North. I -5 a 8-10 lane interstate and 1-15, a 12-16 lane interstate. So then the phrase of F*#k what the hell am I supposed to do now? Kept creaping through my mind. Then I talked to some other friends who live in PB and we all decided we would go to Coronado Island and hope to be safe there. Which is South- but at the time wasn't near any of the other fires. So needless to say, I slept like a baby Monday night. Don't worry- everyone is supposed to call everyone in our area if we get evac notice.

Tuesday:
It still smells. Not as much ash is flying in the air. Went to work again. Not much happened today- everything kept burning. Did go to a cocktail party for work though- that's always fun. After the party I went and met friends at a bar for a drink... like college when we had hurricane parties and tornado parties we were having fire parties here. Kinda wrong in a sense now that I think about it.

Wednesday:
So did I mention Monday night I scratched my eye? It was itching from the smoke and ash in the air and I now have this scratch with a bloody looking spot on my eye. Freakin great. Halloween is this weekend- that means I will have a bloody lookign eye (it's not that bad) for pictures. I guess I should adjust my costume to fit it.

It sounds like the fires are starting to be contained. People are going back into their homes and getting on with life... sorta. I found out last night that the area I used to live in is on fire too. All I was told was 3 of the people I worked with were evacuated from their homes. Hopefully they didn't burn.

So, as you see, it's just another day in the life of Sarah Hill...... there's always excitement around me!

Oh yea, I hope to have pictures up here either late tonight or tomorrow night. I think me and some friends are going to try to hike up Mt. Soledad past the landslide to view the fires. Don't worry it's safe. It actually will give us a look of everything burnign from north to west to south. Should be interesting.