earthquake

Holy moly there was just an earthquake - the first one I've really felt since we moved here. And boy did it scare the living daylights out of me. There was swaying and shaking and what did I do - um, just stood there. I'm definitely going to have to work on that... Oh, and if you're wondering, the dog is not good at predicting earthquakes.

Here's the info: http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Quakes/nc40204628.htm

Dog pictures and a video

Due to a lack of real content, we're showing dog pictures and videos today.






Some nights when Isaac and Oscar come back from their walk, Oscar is crazy! (sorry for the sideways-ness of the video. I don't know how to rotate it. It does rotate about half way through though.) That roll over in the very end is very uncharacteristic of Oscar. He's never rolled over on his own.

Hiking with Oscar - or another excuse to show pictures of the dog

We took Oscar on his first hike yesterday - he seemed to like it a lot, especially when we let him run around in this pond.
Unfortunately we forgot about ticks and didn't realize that he had collected some along the way until 12:30 am last night. Luckily he is well treated with tick and flea medicine. He also saw his first horse on the hike - the dog was better behaved than the horse!

Summary of the week

Isaac and I went to our first CERT class last night (Community Emergency Response Team). Isaac wants to eventually do search and rescue and this is his first step. If there is really an emergency though, there is no way I could let him go help the community while I sat at home and twiddled my thumbs. Moving from DC, where terrorism is always on your mind to Northern California, where earthquakes are now my #1 fear, this class will help me be ready and able to help in an emergency instead of freaking out. The class is pretty fun. Here's some of what we did last night - built 5 foot towers out of 40 sheets of paper, tape and cardboard. Isaac and I were on separate teams.

Here's my team's tower.
Here's Isaac's team's tower.
That piece of paper says Team 2's Tower.

To make up for those boring pictures, here are some cute dog pictures.
We enrolled him in a Grumpy Pup class, which treats dogs with dog-dog aggression issues, because we've found he is afraid of other dogs and tends to lunge and snarl at them when they try to sniff him. He was actually able to meet a couple of dogs at the trainer's and interact with them, which was quite impressive. We've had our first class, but it was without the dog. Next weekend we'll be taking him with us. The trainer said he is a very mild case and we should be able to let him off leash by the end of the class. Yeah!!!

The other big event of the night was Passover. We actually had 2 seders this year - one on Saturday in Santa Cruz with Isaac's parents at Isaac's cousin's house in Santa Cruz and the other at our house on Tuesday night with a college friend, her husband and two of their friends. Since I don't have a job currently, I did the cooking - brisket, asparagus and chocolate and plain macaroons (brisket and macaroon recipes courtesy of my friend Martha). It turned out pretty well and was our first dinner party (ever - even in DC) and Passover seder. Can't wait for next year's seder.

That's it so far for this week! The rest of the week involves hiking, bike riding and dog washing.

San Diego

The weekend before we adopted Oscar, Isaac and I visited San Diego. It was fabulous. On Sunday we saw Vim and Joe (who we hadn't met before) who showed us around Old Town, Balboa Park and Extraordinary Deserts (which was right by our hotel - good thing I didn't know about it before the last day or I would be fat and broke). Isaac and I also made it to the zoo on Saturday, which was gigantic.

We were dumb though and didn't take the trolley tour first, as recommended by the lady at the hotel. Instead we walked around and got hot and tired. There were lots of hogs and deer thrown in between all the exciting animals. Before Isaac showed up, I was able to go to Coronado Island, Pacific Beach and La Jolla. They were all beautiful, especially the sunsets.

Coronado Island

La Jolla

It's pretty cheap for us to get to San Diego from here and I can see us visiting often. There's lots and lots to do there if we get tired of the beach.

Couch sitting proof

Here's how we figured out Oscar sits on the couch when we're not home.

Pillows before we left the house:


Pillows when we got back home:

It's not a really big deal that he sits on the couch, but I think it's the fact that we don't give him permission that really irks me.

Hello from the West!

We've made it safe and sound and we're settling nicely into California. The food here is fabulous (lots of avocado and fresh citrus) and the people are super nice. They'll actually stop and have a conversation with you. We're also adjusting to life in the 'burbs. To complete our suburban transformation, we got a dog from the Humane Society last week.


His name is Oscar and he's pretty well behaved for the most part. He knows how to sit, shake and lay down (not always perfectly, but we're working on that). When we first got him, he pulled on the leash all the time, but has stopped doing that for the most part. We took him to the vet last week (which cost a pretty penny) and we're still waiting for some test results. He's 9 years old and we're really not sure about his life before the Humane Society. The vet found a bunch of scars on his back and his fur is sort of crazy - matted on his back legs, short some places, longer other places brown in patches and black everywhere else. His coloring looks like a Rotweiller and his tongue is black/blue like a chow. In the house he is very mellow- he lays quietly wherever we are, but is super playful whenever we want to play - mostly with tennis balls and the kong. The one bad thing we've discovered recently is that when we leave the house he sits on the couch (which he is not allowed to do when we're home). We verified our suspicions last night by setting up the pillows on the couch on their edges and going out to dinner. When we got home the pillows were all flattened and there was an indent in the pillows where the dog had been sitting.
So, that's all from dog central on the West coast for now. I'll hopefully be updating more often with the developments here.