The Bauer Confidential

One of the best things about traveling is coming home.  I really enjoyed visiting family and friends back in the mid-west, but I was so glad to sleep in my own bed when we returned from our trip.

We had a really nice visit, though I have to admit that flying is even less comfortable when you’ve got a belly the size of a kick ball, and suffer from motion sickness but can’t take anything for it.  We caught up with a couple friends in St. Louis, went to Jefferson City to visit my Mom and Step-Dad, bopped up to Columbia to meet up with some of our grad school peeps, and then over to Illinois to do essentially the same with Matthew’s side of the family.  Matthew’s mom and family threw us a surprise baby shower (well, it was a surprise to me, apparently Matthew was in on it).  It was very nice, we got so many cute outfits (mostly pink) in addition to plethora of bibs and socks!  My mom even came to Illinois for the shin-dig, the whole thing was very sweet and thoughtful.

We headed back on Wednesday and I was home a whole day before I had to head off to Asilomar for the annual retreat for my department.  Though the location is beautiful, the beds are ridiculously hard and I didn’t get much sleep while I was there.  The talks were quite good though; unfortunately sitting still and paying attention for hours at a time isn’t so easy these days with the circus going on in my abdomen.  Spent a little time on the beach, it was high tide though, so I didn’t get to explore the tidal pools like I usually do.

Back in Berkeley now, last night I made my dark chocolate and coffee cake with coffee frosting, by popular request to celebrate a couple birthdays of people in my lab.  Now I’m preparing for my lab meeting on Thursday.  So much fun!

April and I decided that, before the baby arrives, it would be nice to travel home to visit the family.  We left yesterday, arrived in St. Louis, MO last night.  We travel using Southwest, and it is clear to me that the fares are cheep because the employ pilots who must have finished at the bottom of their class.  Landings were rough.

Last night we stayed with April’s friend from college, Laura.  She even made us dinner (thanks again Laura).  Today, we travel to Jeff City, MO to see April’s mother and step-father, and Friday we are going to swing by Columbia, MO to see some friends and catch-up with our old graduate school lab peoples.  We’ll make it to Illinois on Sunday to see my fam.  Right now, we’re still in St. Louis sitting and waiting for a friend at a St. Louis Bread Co, (Panera to anybody not from St. Louis).  Oh how we have missed you, cinnamon crunch bagel.

I have never felt an earthquake until my move to the bay area.  Not that I haven’t had any opportunities.  Believe it or not, the midwest does have some seismic activities due to the New Madrid fault line, the cause of what is believed to be the strongest earthquake in U.S. history.  Presumed of course, the rector scale didn’t exist in 1811-12.  I was 12 (I think), and there was a 4.0 earthquake, centered around southern Illinois.  I don’t know how much it shook my parents house, I slept through it.  So, I never felt any significant quakes until I moved to Berkeley.  Now I live less than a mile from the hayward fault line.  FYI, U.C. Berkeley, back in 1923, built their football stadium right on top it.  They still use it every year, and every year the east half and the west half slide a minuscule amount past each other.  The first earthquake I actually felt, a 3.4, occurred at 3:30pm about a month after I moved here, on my walk back to lab from getting coffee.  It felt weird, like my legs got all wobbly for a second.

Last Friday night around 9pm, the latest quake hit.  A 4.0 about 25 miles east.  April and I were on the couch, and it felt like a Semi-truck hit the house, which was followed by some rolling aftershocks.  This wasn’t the worst.  So far the worst has been a 4am, 4.2 quake that was centered in Berkeley.  Believe it or not, the shake didn’t wake us.  I’m not sure what it was, but something woke both of us at the same time about five seconds before the quake hit.  It was kind of odd, we could hear it rolling towards us, and then our apartment became a 007 martini.  It was a bit scary, probably more so because we were still sleepy from just waking.  It broke windows at the grocery store down the road, and made a small crack in our mirror in the bathroom.

I wondered what the Native Americans thought when the earth shook like that.  It scared me, and I knew what was going on.

On a side note, counting the quake I slept through when I was young, I have been in six quakes.  All of them have occurred at night, except one.  It’s a small sample size, but it made me wonder if earthquakes happen more at night?  I did some looking, and this is all I’ve found.  Still, every time I drive across one of the many bridges here in the bay area, or when taking the train across the bay, I always think “this would be a really sucky time for a quake.”

Florida Marlins vs. San Francisco Giant 8/21/08

(Giants come from behind and win in the ninth)

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