California!

Boom, in this case, in the literal sense.

3.7 isn't big at all, but it was a sharp enough shake (and preceded by enough forewarning rumbling) that my mom and I dropped our forks and said "doorway!" in unison and headed off for safety. (Then, of course, the sharp shake turned out to not be the beginning of anything else, and it's only being scored a IV on the Mercalli scale by people in our zip. I'd give it a III, me, because nothing fell off the table except the newspaper, and we weren't panicked. But others are not so conservative.)

Also, I love the USGS. Back at Loma Prieta, we had to go turn on the radio and sit outside under the beams of the carport (I played candyland with the neighborhood kids) and wait for news to trickle in. We didn't even know how big the quake was for an hour or so. Now? Presuming you've still got the 'net, you'll get a report in about thirty seconds, 1500 Mercalli scale personal responses compiled into an intensity map in a minute and a half (more than that, of course, if it's a big quake), a preliminary Richter scale measurement in four minutes, and the whole shebang will be reviewed by a seismologist fifteen minutes after the quake. How's that for sweet?

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I know I'm back in California because I fall asleep with a little tune stuck in my head. Not a Christmas song, no. It goes like this: "Approaching outbound two car M, M in one minute followed by one car L in two minutes two car N, N in four minutes. The next inbound train is going out of service. Do not board."

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I think I'm still a San Francisco foodie at heart. friede asked me about good restaurants in Philadelphia, and I could name several, but I couldn't ( do what I did today. )