Hello and welcome to the Yarniaks podcast.

This is episode number 180, which we're recording on Monday, November 19th, 2018.

I'm Gail.

And I'm Shirley.

And I have to apologize in advance.

I will be sniffling throughout this episode, which is horrifying.

But between a cold I'm trying to recover from and the smoke in the air, my body is not cooperating with good sound effects for recurring.

So my apologies at advance.

I'm also sounding very froggy, which is an effect, side effect, of all the smoke that we're experiencing.

Unfortunately, California is in the middle of some very, very bad forest fires.

I'm sure that everyone across the country and possibly internationally has heard about it.

Friends from France have checked in with us to make sure we're safe. So yeah, it's international news.

Because the air quality in a good portion of the state, because there's a large fire to the north and a large fire, several large fires actually to the south,

the air quality supposedly is the worst in the world.

It's right here right now.

Yeah, worse than the most polluted cities in the world.

It's crazy.

It makes me so sad for all those people who live in those super polluted cities and all the people

closer to the fires and things like that.

It just makes my heart hurt for them.

Yes, definitely.

So please excuse our froggy voices and our sniffling noses.

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