Apparent the sky wasn't falling, it was just cremated fauna.

And we didn't burn up, our neighbors did.

And last night the show did go on.  And today it will, too.

My daughter is more stressed by her homework than the air quality, so that is a pretty good barometer of how life just goes on in California.

I should add that this doesn't mean I don't feel horrible about our neighbors houses going up in smoke, we all do.

I find it horrific. And it's mind numbing. We go outside, cough, and try to ignore that we're inhaling someone's apartment complex on the way to work.

We turn on the TV and watch the virtual fireplace in our livingroom, and have to work hard to keep in mind this is not fake, but, is, in fact, a very real part of our own county burning.

It happens so often, here in California. Disaster seems like it's part of the culture here.

"Oh, a fire is burning in so-and-so's neighborhood."

"Oh, the ground is moving. So what? I've seen worse. See you tomorrow. same time, same place."

Truthfully, I find it very unsettling, bleak even, to see people's very world's go up in smoke like clockwork, every year.

But, out here nobody seems to think that's uncommon. I know when I lived in New York City, I thought my California relatives deserved to slide in the Pacific if they were stupid enough to live in somewhere so precarious. But, now I live here. Not, by design, perhaps, but, never the less, it's where we live now. So, I need to figure out a way to make this balance out, or I'll go crazy.

Perhaps, we all live somewhere dangerous. We all, one could argue, "pick our poisons."

And in light of Katrina and various other world disasters, I suppose life in California really is just "business as usual."