Wow, it’s been a while since I have recorded anything in my journal. That’s probably because it has been a crazy two weeks. On Friday evening, March 18th Lisa and I attended the advanced Scottish Country dance class to help prepare us for the big ball on the weekend. On Saturday, Mar 19th, we attended a tutorial to try and learn more dances and then on Sunday, Mar 20th was the big ball. We headed to the Portuguese Hall right after church, and the ball started with a big and very delicious meal. After the meal we cleaned up and started dancing. I wasn’t counting, but there must have been about twenty dances. I knew about a quarter of them comfortably, another quarter of them I made many mistakes but got through them OK, another quarter of them I had no idea what I was doing but tried them anyway and then I sat a quarter of the dances because they were hard and I knew nothing about them and I didn’t want to ruin the dance for someone else.
In Scottish Country dance you are highly discouraged from dancing with the people you arrive with. It is a social dance where you get to know and meet a lot of other people. It is also not the kind of dance where you have close contact with your partner either, so it is totally comfortable and a lot of fun. Perhaps the best part of the weekend is that I got to wear my new kilt.
A few months back Jodi showed up to our dance class with a bunch of Scottish type of clothing. She looked at me and said that I looked about the right size and she gave me a full outfit. It included everything. The kilt, belt, sporran, kilt pin, a big fat belt and belt buckle, socks, flashes, a Sgian dubh (pronounced skeean doo), a Prince Charles Jacket and vest.
The Sgian dubh is a small knife that you tuck into your hose (socks). It is perhaps my favorite part of the outfit. It is very sharp too.
On April 10th people started showing up for the Ragnar and our Van started at 5:15am on the 11th. I’ll talk more about my time with Alex’s kids and the Ragnar in future posts but today I just wanted to mention that we had an earthquake yesterday. It was small, only about 5.2 on the Richter scale, and caused no damage, but its epicenter was between Julian and Ramona, about 20 miles from our house. I really wish I had been working in Ramona yesterday. As it is, this is the only picture I could find of any damage.
We have lived in San Diego for over 32 years and the few earthquakes I have felt have all been so small that when I feel them, I have to ask myself if that was an earthquake. This time there was no doubt. Everything on my desk and shelf shook and I could hear the pictures on the walls rattling. The only thing that fell was a picture standing on my shelf. I did notice that a bunch of my other nick knacks on my shelves have moved close to the edge of the shelf so maybe I should stick them down with something.
It was quite exciting. This was the first time I asked myself if I should duck and cover.
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The average rate of motion across the San Andreas Fault Zone during the past 3 million years is 56 mm/yr (2 in/yr). This is about the same rate at which your fingernails grow. Assuming this rate continues, scientists project that Los Angeles and San Francisco will be adjacent to one another in approximately 15 million years.
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