Visit California -- While You Can

Living in earthquake country is an every day gamble. You never know where those seismic dice will land. At least when you park your tush in Vegas you have some idea of the odds, and you get free booze. Here seismologists predict "the big one" -- that's when Nevadans will inherit beach front property since most of California will have fallen into the Pacific -- sometime in the next 30-100 years.

Could they be a tad more specific? Apparently not. They know why earthquakes happen. Just not when.

However, there's a maverick geologist making the rounds on the local news who claims we'll have an earthquake here in the next eight days. He's basing his prediction on various scientific pre-quake indicators -- some of which, like the beaching of dead whales along the coast, have not yet occurred. This is the part where you keep your fingers crossed and don't read anything too biblical into unusual phenomena like thousands of dead fish in a Southern California harbor.

Do I believe him or not? Does he know something other seismologists don't? It's like anyone telling your future or reading your horoscope. You want to believe the good bits but pooh pooh the bad. Only in the case of an earthquake there are no good bits. Unlike Carol King, I'd rather not feel the earth move under my feet.

I think it just makes people more anxious than they already are. We're already sitting in the path of a possible radiation plume and the stores are out of whatever iodine capsules we're supposed to be taking as an antidote. Was that a passing truck shaking the windows or.....?

Whether the guy is right or wrong, I am motivated to replenish my survival kit. The canned tuna is beyond its shelf life and I ate the chocolate in a bout of depression over the holidays.