Home Safe, and Learning to be Ambidextrous Again

Word came down to us Wed from our neighbors that our neighborhood was safe, and the fires had passed, so we packed up and headed home. It was a glorious sight to see Black Mountain, well... not black! We didn't see even a trace of the fires on the way home. I plan to have a look further North this weekend.

Somewhere in the hussle I managed to badly sprain my wrist, so I went to the Doctor yesterday. As the X-ray shows, there's no break, and the brace and meds are making it feel better every day. I expect to be back behind the wheel of my Mustang by Sunday. :)

What this injury has taught me is how over-dependent I am on my right arm. Before I went to Kindergarten, I was ambidextrous. That "freak" trait was literally beat out of me. Here's how it happened:

5 year-old Nathan: "Teacher, which hand is my 'right' hand?"
Teacher: "That's easy. Your 'right' hand is the one you 'write' with."
Nathan: "But I write with both hands..."
Teacher: -slaps my left hand hard and grips my right wrist firmly- "No you don't! You write with THIS hand!".

I was too scared to argue, so I never wrote or drew with my left again. I believe I could relearn it though, and being less than 100% on the tail end of a natural disaster disturbs me enough to give it a good shot. I don't want something as simple as a sprained wrist to take me out of action so easily. Wish me luck!

Family is Safe, Fires Everywhere

As the whole country must know by now, San Diego County has massive fires sweeping across it. My neighborhood had a mandatory evacuation yesterday morning. There's a great map here, updated by the good folks at KPBS, who recently lost their radio broadcast tower to the fires. My family and I evacuated the Rancho Penasquitos area (west of the 15, North of the 56) yesterday morning to my work at Sony Online just off Miramar road. A few hours later we moved to a hotel downtown San Diego, which thankfully has Wifi and cable TV. We have another room for tonight and tomorrow night if needed. My son is 5 and half, but taking the evacuation quite well.

The news sources I've been tracking:

• KPBS Fires
• SignOnSanDiego.com
• CBS 8
  
• Nate Ritter's Twitter feed (you can get Twitter feeds by SMS if you like)
• Google Earth Fire Detection Overlay (requires you have Google Earth installed)
• Cat Dirt Sez (Local Blogger)