Ripples

Ripley, our new dog, got a new bed yesterday. Well, she got a bed yesterday. She only had a crate before. Ripley doesn't like her crate. It's taking her some time to warm up to the bed. She'd rather lie as close to me as possible on the floor than about 6 ft away from me at the foot of my bed, on her bed. After much coaxing with treats and hanging out on her bed with her, all to no avail, I moved her bed. (Note to Nikki: "no avail" means it didn't help.) I'll try slowly moving her bed an inch a day to where I want her to sleep. Or maybe a centimeter a day. We think she's Australian. This could take a while.

Shake it Like a Polaroid Picture

A tiny earthquake was enough to startle me from sleep, yet quick enough to leave me confused as to why I was suddenly awake at the ungodly hour of 5:58 AM during the summer. (Teachers have the best gigs ever.) The USGS confirmed, just a brief moment later, a quake of magnitude 2.9 on the Richter scale.

The top 20 largest quakes of all time in the United States are mostly in Alaska. Interestingly, the tail end of the list is brought up by the ones in California - while numbers 7 and 9 (OF ALL TIME!) were in a little midwestern state....Missouri. Hmmm, looks like they're long overdue for another one. Who's shakin' in their boots now?

When lightning strikes twice

At least this accident totalled my car, and left me relatively unhurt as opposed to the last accident where I was busted up and I forgot my car at home. Of course this time I have health insurance. But I got to wait for 1.5 hours for Kaiser to take five X-rays of my neck, just in case.

My two year old Corolla bit the dust last week when a woman plowed into me in an intersection in Berkeley (Milvia and Dwight). Thank goodness for the kindness of strangers - right after I crawled out the driver's side window because my door wouldn't open (think Dukes of Hazzard - Bo, not Luke), a guy walked up to me and offered himself as a witness saying the other person was totally in the wrong and had run the stop sign.

External damage looked pretty bad on the front end, but I never thought it was a total loss. 21st Century said otherwise. So I'm looking for a new car. I don't know how much I'll get offered for the value of the Corolla yet, but I'm thinking about a Matrix now that I'm living the high life and can afford a little more car this time around. Unless anyone else has a great recommendation for a high gas mileage (~30 mpg), four door, hatchback (new dog) for 20K or less. All wheel drive is a bonus. Now that I've gotten the comments bug on the blog worked out, I expect several suggestions from my new fan base.

Good Storytelling

With friends and family scattered to all corners of the globe and a new addition to the family, I'm going to try to be accessible in this strangely passive way. I like putting the onus on all of you to figure out what I'm up to. Bummer for people without internet access.

I know two people with really fun blogs to read, but I've been told by one of them recently that boring people have the best blogs. Only time will tell where I'll fall on the interesting scale.