One of these things is not like the others

Wandering with Sid

still a fantastic way to spend time

Once a downtown kid …

Back on the Peninsula, which always makes me happy. Drove around the campus

and what is left of the Fort Ord wilds

and went to the Aquarium to see the river otters

and the Jellyfish!!!

Jellyfish!!!

Jellyfish!!!

Pretty day

good breakfast

realizatiion that I would have SUCKED as a pioneer

schmancy evening event with cheese, champagne, chocolate and plenty of transplants who REALLY couldn’t understand how the whole foggy Central Coast summer works

kids are cute when they’re not mine 

and the McKinley Park memories just get better and better

Good: having flowers in the house

Better: when someone gives them to you

One day in late August, the summer before I moved here, I was in DC at the Pentagon City mall. There were banner ads up for this new TV show - the OC. The tag line was something like - it’s like no place you’ve ever lived. And I thought - where am I moving?

I’ve been here awhile now, and it’s home, but every once in awhile, something happens that takes the pop culture references to a whole new level This high school is around the corner from my house.

Newport Beach the new ‘Real O.C.’

MTV ditches Laguna Beach for Newport Harbor High for the third season of its show dramatizing the daily lives of privileged youth.

By Lynn Smith, Times Staff Writer
July 23, 2007

After three seasons of dramatizing the daily lives of the privileged youth of Laguna Beach, MTV will move a few miles north to dramatize the lives of the even more privileged youth of Newport Beach.

“Newport offers something new and different,” he said. “The boating, the coastline, the homes. You have a different flavor when you watch th e show.”

It’s a measure of how rain-starved I am that these few drops on my windshield got me all excited

My MOCA membership expires on the 31, so I pilgrimaged up for one more NightVision

Wandered over to the Concert Hall

through the lonely remains of an event

Downtown is good because we like the shiny lights

Finished out the night in

with Maos leftovers for Sunday lunch

So, I was up at 4:45 with the earthquake and then at 6:30 to get ready. Fabulous Amy’s fabulous roommate gave me a ride to City Hall

I walked around the downtown for a little while, then stopped to have a coffee and a planning review session

There’s a Trader Joe’s, a Jamba Juice and a Safeway across the street, as well as the post office and any number of cute shops and restaurants

Also, the town library is there and you know how I like libraries

I walked to the BART station - yay public transit!

I love that I can be someplace cute and quaint

and then twenty minutes and a train ride later, I can be here

Once back in the Richmond, Amy and I had ginger lemonade and Thai food at Be My Guest

and walked around Clement. You never knowwhat you’ll see on the street.

then it was back to a Carshare car through downtown

and across the bridge

past the port

arrived @ Oakland with time to spare

Tired now

Quake rattles East Bay

Magnitude 4.2 temblor causes little damage but may be foreshock

Jill Tucker, Henry K. Lee, Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Staff Writers

Saturday, July 21, 2007

More…

Friday’s 4.2 magnitude earthquake was a wake-up call in more ways than one.

The temblor roused Bay Area residents at 4:42 a.m. and, while seismically classified as minor, it was powerful enough to scare even those who experienced the 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta shaker in 1989.

The head-scratcher was: Why did Friday’s five-second shaking seem so strong?

U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Rufus Catchings said the quake felt very intense — particularly in Berkeley, 5 miles from the epicenter off Butters Drive in the Oakland hills on the Hayward Fault — because of something called the directivity effect, or where the quake’s energy is directed.

“The energy was directed north, so it felt stronger 8 kilometers (5 miles) north in Berkeley than at the epicenter,” said USGS seismologist Steve Walter. “There was very strong shaking under Berkeley.”

The Hayward Fault is a strike-slip fault, where each side moves horizontally in opposite directions, as opposed to a common fault, where one side is lower and the movement more vertical.

Strike-slip faults “give very strong — if you’re nearby — initial jolts from the (primary) wave and then rattling for a couple seconds from the (secondary) wave,” Catchings explained. “Anytime the Earth moves beneath you, it’s a little unsettling, no matter who you are.”

The energy moved northwest along the fault and, by the time it rose to the ground in Berkeley, was nearly vertical, Walter said, “so it came up from under Berkeley and hit them harder.”

You didn’t have to tell that to Alex Sieu.

The 20-year owner of Dream Fluff Donuts on Ashby Avenue was already at work when the earthquake hit, knocking a large piece of glass out of his window display onto about 100 doughnuts.

“I thought somebody threw a cinderblock,” said Sieu, adding that Friday’s event felt stronger than Loma Prieta to him.

Friday’s quake could be felt as far north as Santa Rosa and in San Francisco, though it did not travel south to San Jose, said USGS spokeswoman Leslie Gordon. A few people in the Oakland hills felt a 2.8 aftershock that hit at 5:48 p.m.

Gordon said about 5,500 people registered Friday morning to access a map on the USGS Web site, which allows the public to report where the earthquake was felt and how strongly. The map showed weak to light shaking in the East Bay and North Bay, as well as in San Francisco and the northern area of the Peninsula.

But it was moderate to strong in Berkeley, lending credence to many East Bay residents’ claims that the initial jolt was jarring — and strong enough to knock some bricks off the chimney of Karen Toloui’s home.

“Something woke me up — my mirror shook,” said 3-year-old Montclair resident Maddy Cometa, who was walking with her tired father to get coffee. Tom Cometa said it was the worst quake he could recall in his 15 years in the Bay Area. He said it knocked down pictures and knickknacks in their Oakland home.

“I never felt an earthquake that big before — it was just like, ‘Wow, this was a big one,’ ” 14-year-old Louie Reed added as he played hockey in his backyard near the epicenter just off Butters Drive in the Oakland hills, near the Mormon Temple.

“It was very sudden, very strong,” said Caroline Aszklar, who lives on Butters Drive. “It woke me up right away.”

Don MacInnes, 75, also lives near the epicenter, on Crestmont Drive. “It really woke me up,” he said. “I’ve been through so many earthquakes you get used to them. I have people on the East Coast who call me and say, ‘Isn’t it terrible?’ But I tell them by the time you figure out what’s going on, it’s over.”

At UC Berkeley’s Boalt Law Library, the early morning shaker damaged several 19th century Swiss law books, whose bindings were ripped when they toppled from shelves. But other treasures around the region made it through intact, including the unopened boxes of “Harry Potter” books at Sullivan’s Montclair Pharmacy.

“Harry survived,” said owner Joe Sullivan, who at first told his son he was having a bad dream when Ryan Sullivan started out of bed yelling “earthquake!”

“At this point, yes, (I believe him),” Sullivan said as he cleaned up shampoo bottles, prescription drugs and other merchandise strewn across his store.

Gordon, however, said the quake was “pretty minor” from a geological standpoint.

“We consider that a light earthquake. It’s not unusual,” she said. “It didn’t interrupt doughnut production.”

It’s possible, though, that the temblor was a foreshock that could be followed by stronger seismic events, Catchings said.

“To be very honest, we can’t tell, but we do look at that kind of thing, and it’s not unheard of for something like this to be followed by something larger,” he said.

There was a 3.8 magnitude quake on another fault about 100 miles north at The Geysers around 10:50 a.m. Friday, which may have been related.

“It’s not an aftershock because it’s far away, but it’s within the realm of possibility that it may have been triggered or influenced by (Friday) morning’s quake,” Gordon said. “There are commonly a lot of small earthquakes up there.”

Gordon and Catchings urged Bay Area residents to use Friday’s seismic event as a reminder to prepare for the Big One.

“People should take this as a wake-up call that something much bigger could happen, and take this as a lesson to prepare,” Catchings said.

Said Gordon: “Just be ready.”

A recent American Red Cross survey found that 83 percent of Bay Area residents are not prepared for an emergency, whether earthquake, terror attack or wildfire.

The agency suggests local residents do the following:

– Make a plan: Talk to your family about what disasters could happen, and choose two places to meet in the event of an emergency, one outside the home and one outside your neighborhood. Find out how and when to turn off utilities and have a personal contact outside the immediate area.

– Get a kit: Store supplies that will last three days, and include one gallon of water per person per day, nonperishable food, flashlights, a first-aid kit and a battery-operated radio. You can buy premade emergency kits online, or make your own.

– Be informed and get trained: Learn basic first aid and CPR, and know to drop, cover and hold on during an earthquake. Stay inside until the shaking stops.

– If you live in Oakland, you can now get a retrofitting permit for your home at a quarter of the normal cost. The new law also allows home buyers to get a rebate of up to $5,000 on their city transfer tax if they retrofit their homes. There will be grants for retrofitting available in 2008 as well.

Visit preparenow.org or redcrossbayarea.org for more information. You can also call the toll free number (877) 773-7229.

Source: Bay Area Red Cross, Chronicle research