shaky start

last night we went to celebrate with one of hue's colleagues who is departing for madagascar on a fulbright scholarship. andrea is the program lead for usc's teaching english to speakers of other languages (tesol). she's also been one of hue's floormates since he arrived in 2004.

the establishment is a vegan ethiopian restaurant, rahel. hue has his doubts, as his father raised a good little carnivore, but he's pleasantly surprised by the sample of collard greens, carrots, potatoes, rainbow assortment of lentils. susan has a beverage composed of barley, flax and sunflower seed. her drink can legitimately be called liquid cereal. hue has some non-alcoholic agave wine, which was on the sweet side but not as good as the honey wine that he usually associates with the cuisine.

for those of who were present at our wedding rehearsal dinner, the couple really likes ethiopian and it's a shame they don't get to enjoy it more often.

our dinner is an intimate gathering consisting of andrea, her sister terry, ginger, job, carmen, gigi, roxanna, hue and susan. we mainly chat with terry who's visiting from her houseboat in the caribbean. she and her husband plan to sail around the world. we'd love to do something similar; alas neither of us know how to sail or have that sort of time...especially with a kid on the way. perhaps when we're retired like terry and her husband.

around 3 AM susan is awakened in their newly upgraded bed. this time it's not because she has to make a run for the bathroom. it's actually the entire bed moving and pictures shaking on the walls. she shakes hue up some more in a moment of fear, and we half suspect an earthquake. but it stops after a few seconds and in our rare state of blissful rest, we simply fall back asleep.

this morning hue wakes up and everything looks fine. all the pictures are in the right places and nothing is on the ground. maybe it was a dream. a quick check of the internet reveals that there was a magnitude 4.5 quake with an epicenter about 30 miles away.

it's the first real earthquake they've felt together since being here. we actually hope for a bigger one, just large enough to scare more people out of the housing market, but of course where everyone is safe.