Shake, Rattle, and Roll

Last night we had our first real significant earthquake since living in Silicon Valley! A little after eight o'clock a magnitude 5.6 temblor hit the Calaveras fault just about 8-9 miles east of where we live. My understanding is that the deeper an earthquake is the larger and more sever it can be. This quake was roughly 5 miles deep which is not terribly deep as earthquakes go. You can read about it in the Mercury news online here.

When it hit I was sitting downstairs working on my computer when all of a sudden it sounded like the ceiling was going to fall in. What really surprised me was the noise. I have often heard of these things described as a "freight train" going by. I would describe it as 10 kids upstairs jumping off of the bed, and was actually my first instinct. I thought "why are the kids running around at this hour?" but that thought quickly went from my head and I ran upstairs and found Melissa and the kids scrambling to get into a doorway. It lasted about 30 seconds so there was enough time to huddle there together and calm the kids down. We did not have any damage from the quake but all the chandeliers in the house were swaying back and forth pretty severely. I went downstairs and checked the USGS site and the temblor was shown pretty quickly on their site here.

We called a couple of friends in the bay area to see how they felt it and I even was on instant messenger with a co-worker Danielle whose husband Alexis is out of town.

Anyway very

Cool Kindergarten Blog

Hey! Just a quick post to highlight a cool blog from one of the parents in Lea's kindergarten class.

You can access the blog by clicking here.

If you look closely you can see Lea in the videos and even a quick shot of Julia.

It is great and has lots of cool videos from different events in Lea's class. Judging by what is there now this will be a great site to watch!

Signs of age

As I approach my 41st birthday I must admit I still feel very young. At the men's retreat we were asked "how old we feel" to which I replied "mid to late 20's" because I generally do at least mentally. But...recently there were to occasions where I felt my actual age.

1) We played a pick-up game of softball at the men's retreat. Nothing special, not a marathon game or anything else out of the ordinary but it was the first game of softball I have played in 9 or 10 years. I was however sore in my legs and shoulders for days after! I am guessing my "slow twitch" muscle fibers hadn't been used that way in a long long time. I had to take ibuprofen just to sleep! Compounding the whole thing was a long plane ride for a business trip to San Antonio the following day which meant I sat on airplanes. I think if I could have gone for a run I would have been OK. I actually had to use my arms to extend and retract my legs while sitting in the plane seat!! Bummer!

2) A few weeks back I was on a business trip to NYC to meet with some of our publishing team. During the visit after one of the team dinners I found myself chatting with two of the younger members of the team. At some point they asked me how I had been successful in my career and did I have any advice for them, which I willingly offered. It was only later upon reflection did I realize that I had become that "older sage" at the office whom younger workers ask for advice! Ouch!

When did I cross the line??

Signed - Still young at heart!

Where you are and where you should be

I just got back from a weekend men’s retreat in the Santa Cruz mountains at a place called Mt. Cross camp which is a Lutheran church camp tucked deep in the redwoods. There were about 30 men there with age ranging from 30's to 80's and it was really great to get away and just talk and have fellowship with other men. When I left for it on Friday it was the place I felt like I least had time to be as it was an extremely busy week and I am now on my way to San Antonio for a work trip (it’s Sunday) however after the first hour or so I felt like that was the place I most needed to be. Once can become so unbalanced that it is good to take time and reflect and have fellowship. We had a speaker who was a friend of one of our pastors and the theme he spoke about was “life comes at you fast”. He broke the discussion down into 4 phases of life: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and older life. We also broke into small groups to talk over questions he had prepared in a more personal format. The questions were related to each phase of life we discussed like “what do you know now that you never thought you would?” etc. There was also plenty of time to play games both physical (softball) and mental (blockus a really cool game you might want to look into).

Despite the fact that I really did not have time to decompress and discuss with Melissa I am glad I went and will endeavor to go again next year.

More family visits

Our run of family visits continued yesterday when we had a visit from my Uncle Lester (Kreisa) and his wife Julie. I have not seen them in probably 8-9 years and Melissa and the rest of the family have never met them!

They are in the bay area enjoying the sites and came down to Santa Clara to have dinner and meet the family. It was great to catch up with them, find out what is happening with my cousins. They also gave us an update on my great aunt Betty who lives near her son Gary in Bend Oregon. They went to the Albuquerque Balloon festival.

We hope they can come see us again sometime soon as we really enjoyed their visit.

Benefits of Family Visits

We are currently enjoying a visit from my in-lays the Durley's and everyone in the family benefits.

For the kids they get lots of extra special attention for example:

Nicolas gets to identify letters and numbers with Gramma which he loved.
Lea got to read to Baba
Julia gets lots of time to tell both of them stories and talk about her play.

Now we parents benefit too. An extra two pairs of hands around the house means that we can get an occasional much appreciated break, particularly during the day for Melissa.

And finally for me, first see all above, and then the culinary benefits for me which include the fact that Ray and Louise are solid meat eaters (unlike the rest of the crew here). That means that occasionally when the stars align we are able to grill some big juicy delicious steaks!

Genesis was awesome!

The staging was awesome, the crowd was into the music and the band put on a great show!

I am hoping to get some phone pictures from Bruce and will post them as soon as I can.

If you get a chance to catch them the by all means do!

Genesis Take Me Back!

I'm heading to the Genesis concert tonight with a friend and I am extremely excited!! To tell you the truth I have been too busy to think about it over the last couple of weeks (see posts on refugees) to really think about the concert but tonight it is finally here!

Using modern technology I was able to buy the songs of of itunes on their set list convieniently posted to their website. Now I have been listening to the songs all day and an prepared for a full sing along journey back to my youth!

I do not go to a lot of concerts so this is really a special treat. I'll update the blog after the full experience!

Happy Birthday to Melissa!!!

Yesterday was Melissa's birthday (i won't endanger myself by saying how old). We started celebrating Saturday night using our new outdoor fire pit. This is a welcome addition to our patio and will heat the often cool nights we have in Santa Clara and make it so we can use the patio all year round. We had a nice day on Sunday including using her new rice cooker and wok cookbooks to make a delicious meal of chicken and broccoli and shrimp and snow peas.

Many more!

Halloween & Zombies

It is that time of year where my kids seem to put a lot of thought into what they want to be for Halloween. The three of them can sit and stare at a costume catalog proclaiming "i wanna be that one.." over and over again looking at witches, goblins and zombies. Of course there are deeper psychological impacts of this behavior which I don't think they grasp.

I returned late last night from a trip to New York City and had awoken early (thanks to my good friend jet lag) this morning when Lea came into our room. Side note: it was nice to hear the excitement in her voice when she realized i had returned, very nice! Anyway she told me she had had a nightmare and she climbed in bed to the safety of mom and dad. I asked her if she wanted to talk about it and she described her dream to me stating that Nicolas was a zombie in her dream and was chasing her around. She also said Julia was turning into a zombie ans starting to chase her around. I asked her how she knew what a zombie was and she described Nicolas walking with stiff arms and legs and wanting to bite her (which might just be something Nicolas would do anyway). I chuckled at this story and chalked it up to the catalog and the upcoming Halloween holiday. For her part Lea, having successfully dumped the unpleasant memory, rolled over and went to sleep. I got up and went for a run.