Best man, Korean man.

The best man has left the country. Chris departed October 18 for South Korea, where he will remain in exile to wait out the rest of George W. Bush's term in office. Actually, he is spending a year there teaching English in Cheongju, which is in the south. He'll be teaching high school age or younger students at a private school.

In the past few weeks he's been getting settled and getting to know the other teachers in the program, who are all young Americans like himself. He also got to spend a few days in Japan on the company dime while he worked out his visa, and has been hiking the nearby national parks (see pictures). He even managed to find a couple Korean guys who make decent burritos. He hasn't started teaching, but he says the students in the classes he has observed have been amazed at his shoe size.

At 6'3", he says the girls giggle when he walks down the street.

Jason

The fires for us.

We thought this might be a good place to let everyone know how the fires that have burned hundreds of thousands of acres across San Diego County have impacted ourselves and our families.

Sarah's mom, Pam, and step mom, Kat, have been evacuated from Ramona since Sunday afternoon. They first heard about the Witch Creek Fire while having lunch together after a play, and by the time they got to Ramona, the east end where Pam lives was already closed off. The police wouldn't let her through in a car ... but had no problem with her walking past the roadblock, so she trekked a half mile up the road to get her cats and a few necessities, then drove out in her other car. Sarah's moms have been staying with their moms in Santee and Oceanside.

It has been difficult to get information out of Ramona, and while we were fairly certain that Kat's place was safe on the west end of town, we were less sure about Pam's, which is located along Highway 78 in the very heart of the burned areas. She had some word from her step brother, who works for the CDF and stopped by her street, but he wasn't able to identify her house specifically. Yesterday, my dad was able to talk him and I through several police barricades and we confirmed that Pam's house escaped the fire — just. The flames burned to within 100 feet of her home (see picture; click image to enlarge), charing much of her property and leaving behind a still smoldering oak we spent some time snuffing out. Several of her neighbors lost their homes.

My dad's sister Carol and her family evacuated for a night out of Carlsbad. My cousin Monica and her family evacuated. My cousin Theresa and her family spent several days at the stadium in their RV. And another cousin of mine evacuated and may have lost his home in Ramona, but my dad and I couldn't be 100 percent sure because the property was blocked off, but from what we could see and what we found out from someone coming out — the area where he lives was a total loss.

My dad, who is an Engineer with the La Mesa Fire Department, never got sent out to fight the fires. On his off day, he and another guy checked on the threatened homes of other firemen.

As for Sarah and I, we have only been affected indirectly — with the exception of the constant ash fall and the apprehension that comes with massive fires burning to the north, south, and east. Her work was closed for a few days when Poway was evacuated, and her school has been closed all week. All my colleges have been closed all week, as well.

Jason

Little big trees.

I wanted to make sure the seeds we sent everyone in the "Save the Date" announcements were viable, so on Sept. 12 I opened one of our extra postcards and planted the 50 or so seeds that were inside using the methods that I mentioned in the Sept. 11 blog entry.

They're alive.

A few days ago I noticed a few little trunks trying to push their way to the surface, and as you can see in the pictures I took yesterday, two of them — one sequoia and one redwood — have succeeded. In the pictures, the sequoia is the one with the penny, the redwood the other. A third (not pictured) hasn't shed its seed casing yet and is a redwood as well.

Though the species are close cousins, they start off quite different and never really get too similar in appearance. What they share is greatness in their genes — one with the potential to be the largest thing to have ever lived (sequoia) and the other to be the tallest thing to have ever lived (redwood).

It's hard to imagine that these two seedlings, overshadowed by a penny, are racing toward 2,000 tons and 370+ feet, respectively. But it's true.

Jason

The itinerary!

The itinerary is up on the site! This takes care of one of the four pages left to be completed. I'll soon be able to move away from my obsession with creating the site. Rather than spending the last two hours grading exams, I instead spent it finishing this page. But it was totally worth it because now that we can see all the cool things we'll do once we're up north for the wedding, we really can't wait to be there with everyone.

We've outlined the week of June 22 - June 28, which are the dates that Sarah and I will "officially" be in Eureka. Seeing as how it's nine months away, things are still a bit tentative for us, as I'm sure they are for you. I know the formal invitations haven't even come out yet, but since it's a destination wedding, I figured you all could use as much information you can get as early as possible. We'd still like everyone to wait for the formal invitations before making lodging reservations, but if you need to request vacation time way in advance, the list of events on this page should help you get a sense of things for the week of the wedding.

This list is not what you must do while there. It's just what we're doing, and what we'd like to do with you. And, we're open to suggestions if you find something you'd really like to do that we haven't thought of — nothing's written in stone. Post all suggestions below.

Jason