rude awakening

 .

So this morning's 4:04am earthquake was a 4.4 on the Richter scale. Not a big deal. (Unless, of course, you're my friend Sari's dad, who has a fear of the number 4.) (Or Chinese, so the number 4 means "death" to you.) By the time I realized it wasn't a dream or my roommates fighting or a rumbling truck (oh-so-cliche) and had sufficiently roused myself from a REM-stupor to tumble off the side of my bed into a triangle-space safe position, I only had to semi-consciously ride out about 10 or 15 seconds of the almost-minute-long shake. All was well.

Yeah, or so I thought.

A couple of weeks ago, I thought to myself, "Hmmm... we are probably due for a quake one of these days." Call it a premonition, call it fear due to recent events, call it my inherent love of planning ahead, but I heeded that thought--and decided I'd better figure out what could be in danger of utter destruction from falling. 

And promptly took my sand jars off their shelves :)

Some people collect souvenirs when traveling (waste), some collect magnets (understandable), some collect spoons (never understood the draw), some collect Christmas tree ornaments (sure wish I'd done that...). I personally like to buy inexpensive jewelry for the memory of the country, and if I'm on an island or a significant beach, I collect (take) SAND. And though it hasn't set me back financially more than a few dollars for the jars, the collection is Mastercard-commercial Priceless to me-- when am I ever going to Huahine or Rarotonga again--? so I really don't want to end up with broken glass and scattered grains all over my bathroom counter someday when the Big One strikes.

 (love that black-sand Tahiti one, too...)

So, the jars (in the bathroom, I have many more in safer places) came down immediately, and I found some QuakeHold at OSH a week ago which I plan to use to secure them. The Hold has been sitting on my nightstand in this exact position the past four days, to remind me to actually complete the project. Oh, and the jars have been/are in the exact same position as seen above, and survived today's shakedown just fine. Yay!

But now... let's move on to a different story.

Here's another love of mine: goblets.

I don't like drinking out of plastic, hate drinking out of mugs (unless it's a hot drink), utterly loathe styrofoam, but really love a little OJ and mineral water, or even water (beverage of choice) in a goblet. And my favorite goblets of all-time are a set from Target, and these from Cost Plus.

If you look closely at the goblet pictured, you'll see a big crack in the bowl of the glass. Pro of these fave gobs: Only $1.99 each. Con: Since they are cheap, they are easily cracked. So a week ago, after this innocent vessel suffered an innocent roommate-inspired accident, I got fed up with them being broken and decided it was time to put them away for the time being (since I can't replace any of them-- the Cost Plus ones were a substitute for the Targets, and now neither are being sold and I can't find similar anywhere else). I removed them from the kitchen cupboard and put them on the buffet on the dining room, intending to box them up before I lost any more.

OOHHHH, THE IRONY.

Total, and utter destruction.

(almost)

In this morning's "thrust" earthquake (only one side of the fault line moves), not one thing in the entire house appeared to have shifted even one inch. Except for in the dining room, where one huge heavy mirror decided to hurl itself away from the wall it was leaning against and dive to the floor to take cover, and in the process take down three tiers of an iron plate stand and its contents, a crystal trifle bowl, and two porcelain serving bowls. Oh, yeah, and TEN BELOVED GOBLETS.

The trifle bowl bounced to safety. Four of the eight silver-rimmed dessert bowls were saved. The Apilco porcelain fruit bowl survived, but the smaller Apilco tulip serving bowl suffered an ignominious death. Three white dinner dishes are in splinters.

 And of the goblets? Four remain. Three Targets, but only only one Cost Plus. Sniff.

Rest in Peace, my beloved material belongings.

Oh, and by the way? I hope not all my premonitions are going to be realized, because lately I've been having nightmares about nighttime intruders breaking into my room. (though if you're a potential intruder reading this, beware-- I've also now lately been sleeping with my emergency crowbar-hatchet, and I'm pretty sure I could inflict some bodily damage if startled). Also, a few weeks ago I dreamt that Kelsey Grammar and I were dating. 

So... yeah. Maybe just the quake one.

bring on the water weight(s)

I like to mix up my workout routine (well... "routine") every now and then, y'know, give my muscles a little surprise, so last night I pushed my limits in the high-paced and potentially dangerous sport of ...

AQUAROBICS.

(dramatization, not an actual photo)

SOME people might think Aquarobics isn't hard-core, but they are clearly wrong. I speak from experience, I've been twice now. And I can testify that, in addition to some good cardio and resistance training, it is pretty much a win-win- ( lose) -win form of exercise, all around!

WIN: 

Everyone knows that a swimming pool is the third-best place to feel skinny. The top place is, of course, among the masses at Disneyland, with the second being within 42 feet of a fried-Twinkie stand at any Middle America county fair. But in water, when you are magically defying heavy gravity and the liquid pressure serves to hold in your gut-fat, you feel super-thin, and compared to the standard population that participates in pool aerobics, you look tiny. And a one-piece doesn't create muffin tops, AND you can look super-strong as you maneuver those huge hand weights underwater as if they were made of styrofoam.

WIN:

Sometimes, in other gym-provided classes, I might feel under-par, either because I want to throw up after only 5 minutes of "boot camp" or because the 85-year-old woman next to me can stand on her head in yoga while taking a brief nap.  But compared to the lady in the pink shower cap last night at Aquarobics, I EXCELLED. And my sprints-in-a-circle (knees high) were definitely the fastest in the whole pool, I think it's okay to brag here. And no, I don't think it's just because everyone else gets special discounts at movies and the Sizz', it really is my athletic prowess at this sport... BUT I will admit that it's not bad being the youngest in the group; for example, when a sideliner stopped the instructor to yell encouragingly "I'M A DOCTOR FOR OLD PEOPLE-- AND THIS IS THE BEST EXERCISE FOR OLD PEOPLE! GOOD JOB!", I could smugly not include myself in that group, and pat myself on the back for getting a head-start on my future.

(lose)...
As previously stated, I look HORRIBLE when wet.  Even a marriage proposal in a jacuzzi does not prove/cannot convince me otherwise.

but, BUT, the biggest WIN! is that

old people + water = a good time

We know this because two of the three movies made about old people in the last 25 years-- "Cocoon" and "Cocoon: The Return"-- were based on just that. The directors would have you believe that it was the combined presence of Steve Guttenberg and alien pods in the water that revived the Quaker Oat dude's diving skills and virility (the power of the pods being secondary to Steve's loveable wackiness, of course) as well as giving his nursing-home buddy a reason to live (and dance) after losing everything on Wall Street to Eddie Murphy, but in truth those old guys would have been having fun a-plenty in the water on their own, and this even in the days before pool noodles were invented.

Unfortunately, the other movie out there about old people, "Titanic", is obviously not a good example of elderly aquatic frolicking. I'm pretty sure Old Rose never jumped back in the ocean to splash around for kicks, not even if there was an eternal-life-giving glowing-cocoon-pod ready to birth a translucent alien floating around, since she probably felt forever guilty for telling Jack that she'd "never let go" but hadn't bothered to offer him room on her life-saving floaty-door. Nope, and her final experience with water was to stupidly toss a priceless gem that could have made me a Lady of Leisure FOR LIFE into the darkest fathoms, never to resurface. I would not invite her to my pool parties, she'd probably ruin Marco Polo too.

The other old people of note, having exhausted the cinematic lineup, are of course TV's beloved Golden Girls. Sadly, we never got to see them whoopin' it up in the water (though we know they were because they lived in Florida) but that's because 25 minutes is only just long enough to review all of  Blanche's exploits and Dorothy's sarcastic retorts and add a few seconds of laugh track to each, and back in those days only the Full House girls got to visit the Disneyworld beaches in hour-long episodes. But The Girls' witty repartee is all pretty much the equivalent of a beach scene with skirted floral one-pieces anyway, anything actual would just be gratuitous. Thank You for Being a (Clothed) Friend.

So last night was not just about pursuing a rock-hard bod, it was about hanging with some pretty fun elderlies. They sure know how to have a good time, splashing around there. And were unperturbed when the instructor admonished them to have a salad, that the cheesecake would go straight to their thighs, after one woman yelled out, "I'm gonna go home and eat LASAGNE... and MIXED GREENS... and WHITE BREAD... and CHEESECAKE with STRAWBERRY FILLING... and WHIPPED CREAM..." as she floated lazily in a circle during cool-down. Dude, you can't tell old people what to do. They know, and they don't care. They've got it going on.

Oh, and also great were the masses of on-lookers in the sauna. Just standing there at the window. Looking. Staring. Pervs. Something like this, minus the toucans, and encompassing a distinctly different ethnic majority.

(I sure wish I could take my waterproof camera in with me to REALLY show the whole experience)

Can't wait til next week.

cool.

I love it when the moon does this.

(airplane not negative scratch)

I'm pretty sure the IOC had something to do with this, y'know like a soothing balm to our Post-Olympic-Depressed souls and as a reminder that we are all looking at the same moon and that somewhere out there, beneath the pale blue sky, someone's thinking of just how they too are going to make it to Sochi 2014.