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The fires are dying down up by our house. This is a huge relief. Hopefully by the weekend the firefighters will have extinguished all remaining flare-ups in the Santa Clarita area. As for the San Bernardino Mountains and San Diego, that's another story altogether.



As far as I can tell, Tony and Cindy’s house hasn't been lost yet. All news I've been following makes no mention of the area near their home that I am familiar with. I can only hope and pray.



Tony and his daughter, Brianna, stopped by Klasky this morning and I gave them a tour of the animation studio. I think it was more a distraction than anything else. I'm sure their whole family is getting stir crazy staying at their cousin's house for so long. I know I would.



With the air quality as terrible as it is, our 18-mile run has been cancelled for this weekend. That means that next weekend is supposed to be the 18-miler. Guess I'll have to figure a way to do it on my own in Bowling Green. I ran on the treadmill at work this afternoon. 4 miles was so easy on the treadmill. It's funny, I can gauge how far I've come by how I feel coming off that machine. When I began my training back in April, I would hit the treadmill (I wasn't gonzo about the frigid weather back then) and I could barely do 2 miles without getting tired. Now I can run off 4 miles at a pace twice that of what I was doing back in April and it feels harmless.



If I was feeling kind of down about my progress, this was a minor pick me up.



I'm not sure what I'll do this weekend. Perhaps the air will clear up enough for me to run out by our house. I doubt I can do 10 miles, but at least I can get an hour and a half of running time in. We'll see. I'm looking forward to going to see a movie with Julie and the kids. I'm bummed (and a little miffed) that this new Disney animated film "Brother Bear" has scenes of death and violence in it. Sophie has been looking forward to seeing it since they began advertising back in, what, January (sure seems that long). When I found out it was unsuitable for her (I mean, come on, parents are killed in it... what's with Disney and killing off the folks. It's almost becoming a cliché: In westerns, you have the hooker with a heart of gold; in Disney family films, you have a young character whose parents have been killed. Good clean family fun.



Anyway, we're going to see something called "Good Boy" which has talking dogs in it. The main talking dog has the voice of Matthew Broderick. Hey, Ferris Bueller as a pooch can't be all that bad. Can't be any worse than the horrific "Ferris Bueller" TV series from years ago.



Alas, I'm beginning to ramble. So I shall bid you good day.



Aloha.

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