Little Earthquakes

It's the morning after Fosco's first earthquake and he still has plenty of ways to use rock music lyrics to refer to last night's quake. Here are some random quake-related notes:

• The surprisingly tabloid-y San Jose Mercury News exists exactly for this kind of thing. Here's the front page for today:
  
  Hmmm. That's subtle. Oh, by the way, did anyone hear how big the earthquake was? Anyone?
  
  
• Yes, we all felt it. But how long did it last? Fosco Lives! hosted a good-natured debate. Official estimates this morning placed the duration at 30 seconds. [N.B., that thread marks the inaugural comment from Fosco's boyfriend Oz.]
  
  
• As you may have gathered from the smaller headlines on the Mercury News front page above, this was the strongest quake in the Bay Area since the devastating 1989 Loma Prieta quake. As you can see from the map below, that quake was epicentered near Santa Cruz:
  
  The Loma Prieta brings back some bad, bad memories for folks around Santa Cruz, as that disaster leveled one out of every three buildings on Pacific Ave (the downtown shopping district).
  
  Even so, you have to love the attitude of the Santa Cruz Trader Joe's manager last night (as per the Santa Cruz Sentinel):
  

  At Trader Joe’s on Front Street, manager Steve Keenan hopped on the intercom to announce that “Santa Cruz rocks!”

  I love Trader Joe's.
  
  
• You have to love the personal interviews from the San Francisco Chronicle:
  

  Guitarist A.J. Flores was at his San Jose home playing with his band when the quake hit. A lamp and guitar fell over amid the shaking.
  
  "Yeah, man, we thought we were really rocking out," Flores said, adding that the musicians quickly realized it was an earthquake and not their Metallica cover song that caused the ruckus.

  Classic. Personally, I once mistook an F5 tornado for a particularly rousing cover of "Enter Sandman." Too bad it killed my grandma.
  
  Or is this one my favorite?
  

  A clerk at Kwik and Convenient in Milpitas, who said his name is Suki Suki, said not much was damaged - except his psyche.

  You have to feel for Suki Suki. I think we're all praying for the health of his delicate psyche.
  
  
• Fosco's sister, Maggie Tulliver, is still making fun of Fosco this morning for being both pedantic and patronizing. It all happened last night when Maggie was expressing her concern over how close a 5.6 quake is to a 6.9 Loma Prieta-grade quake. Fosco offered a brief lesson on earthquake magnitude beginning with the phrase: "Remember that the Richter scale is a logarithmic scale..." Maggie did not "remember" this fact and thought the statement was a bit condescending. Sorry, Maggie--sometimes Fosco just can't NOT be an academic.