Can I light a fire?

February has been a slow month for posting here at pdb.homelinux.net. I think that with my getting married at the end of the month, I have had such a mish-mash of thoughts and emotions in my head that it has been difficult for me to articulate any thoughts other than simple facts and to-do lists. I have noticed this especially in my teaching responsibilities with the youth and at Regen over the last month. It seems like I can put together a reasonable outline in my mind, but when it comes to delivery, everything seems to come out all jumbled up. This last week has gone better in that regard, I think mostly because I have become aware of the difficulty and gave extra prayer and effort to overcoming it.

And now for something completely different!

Here is some simple information that may be helpful to those of you who live in the Denver metro area: How to know if air quality conditions allow you to have a fire in your fireplace or not.

First, the regulation: If you live in the seven-county Denver metropolitan area (including Denver, Boulder, Broomfield, Douglas, Jefferson, and areas west of Kiowa Creek in Adams and Arapahoe counties), you are subject to mandatory residential burn restrictions during "red advisories". Unfortunately for us, the same cold weather that often makes us want to light up a nice, warm fire also brings with it the atmospheric conditions that tend to make our smog worse and thus bring on a red advisory.

To know if a mandatory residential burn restriction is in place, you can check the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment advisory page or call the Air Quality Advisory hotline at 303-758-4848. What I did, to make it even easier, is I created a Denver Air Quality widget (click to add) that I added to my Google home page. Now all I have to do to see if Holly and I can light a fire is pull up Google in Firefox. Could it be any easier?!