Howling Frog Books

 Last week we had the start of another giant wildfire, which is why I haven't been posting.  It started with a guy, already a double felon, who seems to have set his mother's car on fire and then shoved it into a gully in the park, right in front of witnesses and while there were lots of people there.  He was 'heavily intoxicated' and wanted the insurance money or something.  None of it makes any sense.  Firefighters got right on it, but the blaze quickly got way out of control, ripping through miles of hot, dry foothills to the north.  It moved even faster than the Camp Fire, and within a few days was over twice the size. The first night, fire all along the ridge above Chico The scale of this fire is just unimaginably huge.  It stretches for miles, right up to Lassen Park.  Most of this area is not inhabited by humans, so there hasn't been the loss of life and structures that the Camp Fire entailed, but some of the tiny places up there have been ...

Warning: this post is preposterously photo-heavy.  I took so many pictures on this day.... We had a good night sleeping with the windows wide open, but by this time Kim and I were both covered with bugbites from the last few days.  I blame the Aldbury duckpond, which doesn't have a lot of ducks (mostly no ducks) but does have a lot of bugs, and is right outside the pub.  Anyway, at 9, Vivien from the St Albans office arrived to very kindly take us there.  We made a deal; she would store our luggage for a day and we would write a blog post for her about how much fun we had in St Albans, thus promoting American tourism.*  And she even offered to pick us up.  So off we went to St Albans and shoved our luggage into a storage room in her (Tudor!) office upstairs from a bakery. The office is in the Christopher Inn building, once an inn used for pujblic events.  There is a strange sculpture of a 'succubus' in an alley corner, which apparently assured patrons ...