When in Rome... get out before the earthquake hits.

So, I'm in Israel right now and apparently completely jetlagged, because it's... oh, 4:30am and I'm blogging instead of sleeping.

I'm having an AMAZING time, and enjoying every minute. I'm doing a much better than usual job of calling people up and making plans and doing stuff, and my Hebrew is holding up reasonably well - it's the first time that I'm here with any reasonable Hebrew to try out, so it's a pretty awesome experience to actually understand some shit.

I had a 7-hour layover in Rome on my way here, and I was extremely tired, having already stopped over in Paris. The next leg of my flight was on El Al Airlines, so I had no idea how much time I'd need to deal with security and transferring my luggage and stuff, so it was hard to resist the temptation to spend the hours eating, sleeping, and shopping in the huge airport... but I didn't! I asked a million people a million questions, changed some dollars to euros at a ridiculous loss, took a train and then a subway, and emerged from the Metro tunnel directly in front of the Colosseum. WOW. I spent about two hours walking around the area and taking pictures, ate an eggplant pizza at a cafe from which I could have hit the Colosseum itself with my crust if I'd thrown it hard enough (next time :) and went back to the airport. Amazing, perfect, fabulous. I was so freaking proud of myself!

And then, you know, a few hours later, 130 people died. Sharing that SoCal love? Oy.

I went dancing only one night out of three so far, but I have nine nights left and I intend to dance on seven of them. Yeee-haw!

Coasters and other earth-shaking news

What if you were riding a roller coaster, and there was an earthquake while you were on it, like at some crazy high scary moment??

I know, this is a crazy question and would be a crazy coincidence if it happened, what are the chances, etc. Except... well, I live in California now, and I went to Six Flags Magic Mountain last night and went on SUPERAMAZINGSCARYAWESOME roller coasters, and then there was an earthquake.

Ho.Lee.Cow.

First of all: last night was definitely in keeping with the do-what-you're-afraid-of theme, because while I like roller coasters, I'm no crazy fearless do-em-all kind. But I was with a whole bunch of people, and we were all having a really great time, and I had a buddy to hold my hand, and... well, check it out: Colossus (great classic wooden one to getcha started...clickclickclick on the incline....) and then Scream (oh, I did indeed. This one was great.) and then Batman (um, kind of sucked. Skip it.) And then... WOW: I rode GOLIATH. Wow. And then.

And then.
And then roller coastering changed for me forever. I rode Tatsu and let me tell you, it is a new genre of roller coaster. The website says this is "the tallest, fastest and longest flying coaster on Earth." You gotta try this shit. You will never come closer to actually flying than this thing. It's unbelievable. It's amazing. I almost cried.

And if the park weren't closed by that time, I would have ridden it again. And again. Wow.


So, yeah, and then I got back to camp and was checking my email and there was an earthquake. And apparently, although it was absolutely the first real earthquake I ever felt in my entire life, it was only a minor aftershock of a quake in Chatsworth. (Wow: just added the link above to the reuters article about the quake, and it totally mentions my favorite thing about the Valley, as documented here previously. Love it!)

What a day.

Hope all my bookcases are home are still standing.