If anybody comes asking, I was camping in Angeles National Forest last weekend.

The good things about living in my neighborhood:

- low rent
- taco trucks
- sense of community
- $3 movie theater

The bad things:

- loud domestic fights next door
- the ice cream man song
- people smoking pot in the movie theater

Yes, that's right. Baby and I saw Batman Begins tonight, and there were a few kids near the front row smoking weed in the theater itself. Nasty. I went outside and told the owner -- who looked like he was having the time of his life changing the letters on the marquee -- but he just turned on the air conditioner in our theater. He came by and "looked" for the hooligans about thirty minutes later.

But the movie was good.

What do these three men have in common? According to this bizarre website, they're dead ringers for yours truly. Although I wish the years of living in Chris Knight's closet had resulted in physical similarities between the two of us, I have to say that I look nothing like him. And I'm similary flattered to be compared this handsome Dravidian fellow to whom I bear no resemblance, but Scott Baio? What did I do to deserve that? Charles in charge, indeed.

So, I ran a different picture of myself against the exhaustive archives of Analogia's Free Star Estimator. This time, I got a clearer message:

I'M A NOBODY. More accurately -- a balding nobody. Who are these guys?

Anyway, find out for yourself who some stupid computer program thinks you look like. It's fun.

Once I figured out that we were having an earthquake (given, a tiny one) I was pretty freaked out. It's unlike a hurricane, my natural disaster of choice, in that there's no warning system and no way to pre-gauge the severity. Our new house is perched (I think precariously) on the top of a hill, so I just grabbed baby #2 out of her bouncy seat and ran outside. Maybe not the best choice, and not one any of my neighbors made, but oh well.

Apparently it's a point of pride for Californians to be too cool for earthquakes. I'm not too cool, obviously, and the whole thing has me a little flustered. My mom wants us to move back to Texas (where I once rode out a hurricane with my arms around a bridge piling while I watched my bike float away on the rising waters) because it's safer. I think we'll wait until Lazlo finishes school to move back to the land of hurricanes, alligators, tornados, the President, and all the venomous snakes you can eat.

Seriously though, guys. I guess it's just the combo of earthquake, moving into a new house in a new hood, and having the baby's room so much farther away from ours. I'm feeling a little basket-casey. I'm not sleeping well and I keep having those disturbing feelings that I'm going to make something terrible happen by thinking about all the terrible things that can happen. Something under the house (probably crap our lazy landlord stores under there) was dislodged by the tremor and crashed down in the middle of the night. Wren had a myterious screaming fit at 4am (always scary). And this morning at 6 our neighbor decided to cut down a tree next to the baby's window. I can now tell you what a chainsaw sounds like through a baby monitor.

All in all I'm a mess. And Lazlo is having boys night out at some unnamed campsite in the woods. I'm going to hole up here, hang some pictures (so I'll have a hammer handy to defend us from masked assasins) and watch the BBC Pride and Prejudice. I rented CSI, but that's obviously not going to work.

Well, really, taking the gold line to work.

I took the train to the office today for the first time! It was great. Since my good bike is temporarily decommissioned with a flat tire, I have been riding public transportation to work. I've taken the bus a few times, with results varying from slightly late (5 minutes) to very late (40 minutes). The train was fabulous. Although I left the house late and missed a train just as it was leaving the station, I was still on time to work. (By which I mean that I beat my boss to the office. I was actually five minutes late.)

So, if you live in LA and need to commute to Pasadena or Sierra Madre, let me recommend the gold line.

And if anybody can tell me why tire patches never work on my bike, please do.

Also, North Carolina still sucks.

I'm posting now** because I AM FINALLY DONE WITH GREEK. I could -- if I chose to -- never take another Greek class in my life. Of course, I will have to use my Greek in the future (in exegesis class -- that's fancy-talk for "Reading"), and I actually really enjoy Greek ... but it's comforting to tell myself that, for the first time in nine months, I am not required to translate a dead language*** on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Now I can get into the tedious business of finding out what it means to be a human.

The news:

- Our new house is turning out to be pretty great. THE SWAN has not been so irritating, although every time I talk to her she mentions that the previous tenant was "on the drugs."

- We finally got our digital camera working again, so watch this space for more pictures of our baby.

- The new neighborhood isn't as bad as Baby makes it sound. So far, there haven't been any drivebys. In fact, I've left my bikes on the back porch for the last few days and nobody has even -tried- to steal them.

* I stole the title of this post from a FRIEND'S BLOG even though it is barely relevant.

** ARE YOU HAPPY TODD?

*** In summation I have only one question: "Is Greek dead?"