Three in one day

That's it. I've been initiated. Three in one day. One slipped under my radar, two within my realm of consciousness.

Behold, I am a Californian who has felt the sweet Earth shake under my feet, demonstrating that we are but prey to the uncertain geology beneath us.

Like most Californians, without earthquake insurance I take the ultimate risk of losing everything...well....I don't have very much at this point in my life - but I'd loose enough to cause some hardship, that is for certain. I actually stand to lose mainly sentimental keepsakes. If this house goes down in the big one, digging through the rubble will be difficult, and I don't know if I could even do it considering there will be broken sewage pipes and that kind of thing around. What's worse, seeing that Berkeley has a legion of seasoned looters within its ranks, I face some pretty stiff competition in recovering my valuables. A few examples of my booty: my father's wedding band from his marriage to my mother, some other jewelry, some artwork, Fleagle the Beagle (I got it in 1981!) and my favorite clothes and accessories. Oh, I forgot about all my school books and readers. Those are very important and HIGHLY desired by the looters. I'll be looking for those readers as a first priority, actually..they will be good fuel for my campfire I'll need to keep going for the many weeks between the time the quake hits and President Bush wakes up and sends some Federales to dig us out.

My roommate and I have been talking since October that we need to get our survival/emergency supplies and evacuation plan together. We have a plan - if cell phones don't work, we plan to meet at Sather Tower as soon as possible. We then will use the bathrooms at Wurster Hall (the building was retrofitted a couple of years ago and is unlikely to suffer much damage) and head south to Bateman Street to assess damage to our forsaken home and secure supplies and things we will need to make it through til the repairmen/rescue people show up. That could be a long time, so I am going to propose we buy $100 of water, $25 of batteries, another flashlight, several bundles of candles and matches, and a lot of canned chili. Chili is filling and you don't have to eat it hot, although eating it warmed is preferable. We could live off a few cans for a week. Sure, we'd drop some weight, but we can stand to lose a few.

If (and when) we run out of chili, our default plan is to pack up our remaining survival supplies and head off to the Oakland hills and join the rest of Berkeley's privileged squatters. It will kind of be like Burning Man we imagine, but there will not be any posers. We will live off the rabbits and rats, and supplement our supplies by looting the homes of rick Oakland hill-dwellers that have been diminished to paltry piles of rubble.

Unfortunately, our survival supply run must wait til Saturday after my hair appointment at Barbarella, so I hope the BO (Big One) doesn't hit until at least 6pm on Saturday the 4th of March.