Truckquake is the poor portmanteau (poortmanteau?) I’m going to use to describe earthquakes that I experience when I’m in the truck.

Earthquakes are a relatively common phenomenon in California. According to the California Department of Conservation, there are ~200 “potentially hazardous” faults in the state, and they generate an average of “two or three” quakes per year registering 5.5 or higher on the Richter scale, which is enough to cause “moderate [structural] damage”. Fun, lighthearted stuff.

Oh Christmastime, what can I say about you that hasn’t already been said?

Literally nothing, so let’s just skip the whole “waxing poetic about Christmas” business.

My personal relationship with Christmas is, well, slightly complicated and always changing. I was raised Jewish (as I’ve mentioned before), but I fell off the Judaism-bandwagon pretty much immediately after my Bar Mitzvah. Not to say that my family were particularly good Jews to begin with — we faithfully celebrated Christmas every year, and occasionally lit our Menorah candles and said our blessings. But with the advent of my truckliness, my thoughts on Christmas, and specifically, on giving and receiving gifts, have changed pretty handily.

I want to travel more. It’s a well-documented desire of mine. Specifically, I want to plan my own trips, because I’ve historically been pretty terrible at it. I even made a “process”, which I’ll paraphrase here:

1. Wait until a particularly whimsical mood strikes.
2. Bike aimlessly until you find a book store.
3. Enter the book store.
4. Find the travel/travel guide section.
5. Close your eyes.
6. Spin around, preferably 3-5 times.
7. With eyes still closed, pick a travel guide off the shelf.
8. Buy the travel guide.
9. Read the travel guide.
10. Go there. Optional: Be merry.

Using this bulletproof approach, I had picked out a destination, Taiwan. I don’t want to say I’m giving up on all of that, because I’m definitely still going to do it…I just went somewhere else first. To explain where and why requires the slightest bit of backstory.

This is a story about my poor life choices and where they sometimes take me. It all started when I was a little boy a few months ago. It’s President’s day weekend , and I’ve got some grand plans, at least in relation to how quiet I usually like my weekends.

Friday night was catching up with some friends

Saturday was a holiday party (¿in February?)

Sunday was exploring San Jose

I can’t remember where on The Internet™ I originally saw it, but at some point in the past few months I came across an article about a woman selling her preposterously picturesque home in Canada for the low, low price of $19 and an essay of (at most) 350 words.

The catch here (because houses usually cost more than nineteen dollars) is that you have to win the contest (i.e. have the bestest essay), and the woman running the contest needs to receive enough entries to cover what would normally be the asking price of the house, which happens to be $1.3 million USD. Crunching the (two) numbers here, that means ~68,000 people need to enter to effectively subsidizing the cost of this home for one lucky (and probably Canadian) duck.