Okay, I've historically been very lucky with earthquakes. Living in California all my life, I've only been in one earthquake larger than 6.0, and I've missed five >6.0 quakes by days, in one case, by 15 minutes!

As you can see by the link in the sidebar nav, I like to keep a close watch on quakes in the Bay Area, and what I've been watching for the last few days makes me nervous. Let me explain. First, take a picture of the earthquake activity in the entire bay area for the last week. Here's a closeup of Berkeley:

Now the three yellow squares are quakes in Berkeley (and Orinda) in the last three days. The blue square is a 2.3 quake this morning. Now 1.x and 2.x quakes are nothing, you don't even feel one if you aren't sitting still on top of it and expecting it, but most of the big earthquakes in California have had small foreshocks days or hours before the main strike.

Okay, now for the scary part. If you look at the picture, I live on the part of the black Berkeley dot that is closest to the Hayward faultline (the black line running through the blue quake). I can see it from my apartment. Marion Jones could run to it in under a minute. What's worse, I live on the 6th floor of an unreenforced apartment building built in 1921. The Northern Hayward fault is due for a big strike, and while I'm knocking on wood, I know that if I'm in the apartment building when it happens, I've just got to jump on the bed and pray.

What does impending doom look like? Let me show you. Anyhow, if the quake should happen, the machine that serves this site will bite it along with this building, so there will be no 'told you so.' Allright, I'm just being dramatic now, but I can't decide whether it's bad dreams for the past week that have caused my alarm, or my alarm that's been causing the bad dreams...

How do things look right now? Check it out.