Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.

(Post by Tracy)

FYI, both http://www.tom-tracy.com and http://www.tracy-tom.com (our old wedding websites) should now direct you to this blog. Yippee!

So, it's Tuesday, which means we have officially been here on our own for a whole week. Mom and Dad left last Monday, and Erika and Michelle left the Wednesday before that. It was so, so great having them with us on this trip. Can't express that enough.

We've also been lucky to spend a lot of time with Tom's California family since we've gotten here - his grandma, Uncle Andy and Aunt Cassy, and two cousins, Alden and Anna. We're really excited, too, to have my cousin Mark and his fiancée Brigette to get together with. It's so nice to have people nearby, especially when everything is so new.

Tom and I are doing pretty well and loving the apartment (even with its thin walls and the person upstairs who seems to rearrange his furniture nightly). It's roomy (ok, compared to our Milwaukee apartment,) and homey and so close to being “done”! Those of you who know us well will not be surprised that it took us an entire afternoon to unpack our books and arrange them on the bookshelves, but it feels really good to have that put together, alphabetically of course, and arranged by genre.

There is one thing I've been less-than-excited about. It just kind of dawned on me the other day, the fact that California has earthquakes.

Tom and I had been wanting to buy a map of LA, so we went over to Barnes and Noble. While I looked at maps, not finding exactly what I wanted, Tom started reading something aloud from the book he was browsing, and he was reading an account of the Northridge earthquake that happened near where we live, in the early 1990’s.

Now, I will be the first to admit that I am an anxious person, and for most of my life I've had a respectful fear of tornados. I think my grad-school roommates could best attest to this from the time I made them pull chairs into the windowless, first-floor hallway of our former-convent home and sit with me for a few hours while a storm passed. Then when I moved to Milwaukee, I signed up for severe weather alert text messages (from both the Weather Channel and WTMJ) and also promptly tuned my weather radio to the appropriate frequency. There were many nights when a storm would roll through, making my phone beep every 15-30 seconds to let me know that, yes, there was a severe storm rolling through.

So until our recent trip to Barnes and Noble, I was breathing easy about the lack of tornados in California, especially when the Weather Channel told me that "a Tornado Watch had been issued for Milwaukee WI" last Friday and I was here. I suppose the relief that I had been feeling about being away from possible tornados had distracted me from considering the other natural disasters.

And then Tom started reading to me about the Northridge earthquake…

And then I picked up a California guidebook about earthquakes...

And after about 3 minutes of reading, I was ready to buy my plane ticket home…

I forced myself to put the book down and waited in agony for Tom to be ready to leave the bookstore; I reasoned that if I was going to die in an earthquake, I would hate for it to be from millions of books falling on me at Barnes and Noble.

We've talked to numerous people about earthquakes since then, and we've been gathering the important information necessary to try to be prepared. Our major furniture is bolted to the wall. We have museum putty to hold down glass vases. I've been reading up on what to do before, during and after an earthquake (during an earthquake: Drop, Cover, and Hold on). Under heavy desks or tables is a good place to be. I do plan to gather some emergency kits, and I'm following the other useful advice on FEMA’s website as well.

We got on the topic of earthquakes with the Trader Joe's cashier that day after leaving Barnes and Noble. He told us about the app he has on his phone that tells him whenever there is an earthquake, how strong it was and where it was. It sounded interesting, but I decided that for now, it's probably better for me to just keep hearing when Jefferson County, Racine County or Milwaukee County has a severe thunderstorm alert or flash flood warning instead.