we have to run out of burnable material at some point.

As we discovered with the fires of 2018, while we live in the middle of a giant megalopolis and don't need to worry about wildfires touching our house directly, it turns out that a sufficiently large fire, at any distance, can create a barely livable environment. The AQI measurement of air quality, which is normally 40ish on a bad day, has been above 200 all day, and generally miserable for a couple weeks now.

A surprise to everyone was fires exploding in Oregon, which is hardly immune from wildfires overall, but definitely hasn't seen anything like this in recorded history. The fires are reaching towards the Portland suburbs, and one of my minions at work had to evacuate the other day. So that's all terrible, and one wonders if the West, overall, is just not habitable in the relatively near term (5-10 years), which, if true, has dire implications for our secret plan to migrate up to the Pacific Northwest once the kids turn 18 in a couple years.

Another surprise has been that while we have thought, with the pandemic, that we haven't been leaving the house, it turns out that once we are staying inside because of unhealthy air, we learn that we were, in fact, leaving the house a lot more than "never," and that has been important for our mental health. Maslow's hierarchy of needs does not specifically call out "breathable air" at the bottom, it's sort of implied, but it does turn out to be more important than food or water.

Don't get me started on the anniversary of 9/11, when we, as a nation, truly lost our fucking minds.

Maybe I can sleep until, I dunno. December? Is December long enough?