Certifiable

I got one thing in the mail yesterday: my certificate of being a licensed Surfcam course-completer. Cool, now I need to get a frame for it.

Today is the 12 year anniversary of the Northridge quake. I remember it, it woke me up.... I had no trouble getting up that morning. I was living in the South Bay area at the time, and while it was shocking, it wasn't especially bad there, the '87 Whittier Narrows quake was much worse to me, but I was living on the third floor of a pre-WWII wood frame apartment for that one. It just rocked and rolled all over the place!!! I do remember heading out the door to go to work that morning, and my next door neighbor was in her yard on the phone, ascared to go back inside the house. She looked at me and asked "you're not going into work, are you???" I said yea, there's NO damage here or on the roads going there, and maybe there'll be something to clean there. She wasn't going, but then again, she worked for the city, and probably got paid anyway.

I did a little looking around about the quake, and one site had it listed as the costliest U.S. disaster, at $44 billion, topping hurricane Andrew. I figure that must me out of date, I'm thinking September 11 must have ended up costing more. Hurricane Katrina could top the cost on that, too, I'm thinking. I haven't made mention here, but my dad went down to New Orleans to help with the clean up last week with a group of volunteers. He says a lot of the place looks as though nothing has been done at all. What he ended up doing down there is demolishing the insides of houses. Apparently they think the outside walls will be alright, just have to make all new interiors for them. Fascinating. He took a lot of pictures, I'll have to check them out.