Sadly, not the number of my followers on WordPress…or even page views, for that matter.

No, this is just what some random woman yelled at me yesterday as I was walking down the street.

Portland has a lot of street performers; buskers and whatnot. Like this shiny fella.

And of course, the Unipiper, who is always a treat to encounter.

One that I haven’t seen in quite sometime – to my relief – is the giant Pirate Clown! Although, I am a little concerned that someone might have…conquered him.

Anyway, part of me wondered if she was shouting the estimated number of street performers in the area. Another part briefly considered whether she might actually be one of them – with my luck, her schtick was guessing people’s weight and she had just yelled mine out.

As I was writing her off, she clarified: 55,000 acres.

Ok, thanks?

Now, I try to not watch the news too often because I don’t watch TV to enhance my naturally grumpy demeanor, rather to escape it. But I am savvy enough to intuit that she was commenting on the current state of forest fires in my fair Oregon.

55,000 is a great number of acres to be ablaze.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a spontaneous conversation with a rando. Usually, I’ve bellied myself up somewhere for some refreshment-slash-therapy-cum-company, though, so it was quite by reflex that I looked at my hand to see if I was holding a drink after her ejaculation.

(Enjoy that little giggity gift, Diezel.)

A glance skyward confirmed my assumption as to her meaning.

There’s some pretty dense smoke in our air these days, but at least – so far – we’ve been spared the ash fall that we had during last summer’s wildfires. If you want to know what snow in July looks like, any of us Oregonians can paint you a picture based on our last summer, which took on a slight nuclear winter feel.

Maybe it was August.

Maybe the exact when isn’t the point. That it looked like it was snowing at any point during the summer was.

As I hustled on by, I thought, “I know…I read the air advisory to stay inside today” and admitted to myself that just probably I didn’t need to be outside. My second thought was, “Look lady, I just wanted a Diet Coke, ok?” otherwise, I’m totally not opposed to at least slowing down for a chat with a relatively harmless street person.

Case in point:

However, I wasn’t feeling too charitable yesterday. My personage wasn’t feeling 100% to begin with, which I do worry is partially smoke particulate related. Also, I get a little reflexively cross when discussing forest fires because it’s usually caused by one of us Stupid Americans in the first place.

But even if I had been feeling chatty and inclined to slow down to indulge a rando on the street, it probably wouldn’t have been a great conversation…since she was smoking!