I just checked my work E-mail and found a nice little surprise in my mailbox:

From: Carlos Ramon
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 2:35 PM
To: Red-San Diego
Subject: Thank you, Marion!!!

Marion took a phone order yesterday from a customer that was so impressed with her that she asked to speak to a supervisor to let us know just how wonderful a job Marion was doing. She said, “She’s fabulous…she was really wonderful, really helpful, really smart, easy to talk to….” Wow!!! Great job, Marion! We all really appreciate it!

YAYE ME. It feels nice to be appreciated (especially after my horrid day at work last week). Anyway, school in SD is cancelled for the rest of the week (which doesn’t really apply to me since I only have classes Monday/Wednesday). Four days have passed and the fires are STILL burning. Unbelievable. You know how the fire started in the first place? Some idiot-hunter-guy was lost, so he made a smoke signal so he could be saved. Someone should’ve told this idiot-hunter-guy that there’s a high enough risk of brushfires during SANTA ANA weather without him starting a brushfire of his own (for those of you non-southern-Californians, Santa Ana weather consists of really strong, really warm, really dry winds). By saving himself, he killed over a dozen people, burned down over 1,500 homes, and closed down schools for an entire week. I remember a few years back when a fire broke out in Alpine because some moron threw their cigarette out of their car window and trapped the East County residents in their homes because the only freeway out of there was on fire. I didn’t think it could get any worse than that. Today, Arlene told us that her close friend’s body was found yesterday burned so badly that the only way they could identify the body was through his dental records. What kind of f*cked up shit is that? Who gets punished for these deaths? These lost homes? I can tell you who ISN’T getting punished! The idiot-hunter-guy! It’s just like that old grandpa who mowed down all those people at a farmer’s market in Santa Monica with his car. He killed 8 people (including a baby) and no charges were pressed against him because he was old. These past few days, all I kept thinking about was how much nature favored disorder, come to find out today that all of these horrible things happened because some guy got lost in the woods. I’ve always been a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, but recent events are diminishing any faith I have left in that belief. I may not be the most religious girl in America, but my prayers go out to all those affected… Today, I spent the entire day with Bedhead Ed. We picked up Arlene and Zell from the airport (welcome home!!!), spent some time at their house, (window) shopped for snowboarding gear, and had dinner at Pat & Oscar’s (thanks, poopoo). We got into a microscopic fight before I left his house, but it all seems so trivial now that I’m watching the news and people are crying in front of what used to be their homes.