Burn, Baby Burn

Dear Neighbors and Those Living in My General Vicinity,

As you are no doubt aware of, by your own return address, we live in California. For those un-initiated into the California experience, let me assure you that one of the reason we all live here is because of the weather. It is currently early December and the talk here is all about rain, not snow, not sleet, not ice, but RAIN and little else. This talk will not get much worse, we might have a hard frost, but that is about it. In the higher elevations, they do get snow(and those people are exempt from the upcoming rant), but for most of us it is just rain. The temps will be in the 50's, 40's and the occasional 30's. Again compared to many parts of the country, this is incredibly mild weather and basically this is why we all deal with insanely high property costs and an even more insanely run government (think the last days of the Greek Empire, but with more whining).

This brings me to my point and yes I have one(insert shocked look here). If the weather here is so mild, then why does it seem like everyone within a 20 mile radius of my house lights up their wood burning fireplace the second the temperature drops down to 60 degrees? Why? For the love of all the is holy, please tell me why. Because I am sick of smelling the burning wood. It drives me crazy. Do you want to know how many times we have used out fireplace in the 6 years we have lived here, ZERO times? I don't even know if the damn thing works. For real, we have central heat, and we really need nothing more than that and a sweater. The power rarely goes out here because we live near an airport and two large national labs. They need the lights on, so the rest of use get some damn fine power service.

The environment and lung factors aside, we have also have this thing in California called Fire Season (it is less of a season and more of an omni-present threat really), and I find it very alarming to smell smoke and not know if it is coming from my chilly neighbor or from a brush fire. Sure if it is raining I know what has caused the smell, but on a day with dry and windy conditions, one really has to take pause and wonder: destruction fire or warmth fire or both as these things can get out of hand.

So, I beg, nee implore all to just grab a sweater and save us all a little fresh breathing air. And the next person burning a wood fire on a spare the air day with the Prius parked outside get turned in directly to Al Gore. I am serious, Al Gore!


Sincerely,

Coughy McCougherson