Google Maps

Yesterday the girls had some friends over for a end of school movie night/party/sleep-over.  As I (Jon) was walking out of the Pizza/Doener restaurant with five pizzas, the Google Maps car drove by with four cameras mounted on it's roof... and I just started laughing.  I know I'm going to get some comments from friends that see the picture.

So if you look at a street view of downtown Kandern, Germany and see me carrying 5 pizzas, you can be certain that they weren't all for me!

Earthquake!

A couple of nights ago an earthquake got our attention! On May 5 at 3:49am a moderate earthquake measuring 4.5 on the Richter Scale shook the southern Black Forest (the epicenter was located about 10 miles away from us). Thankfully it lasted less than a second, so there were no injuries or damage reported.

We awoke to a loud, deep "boom" sound that shook the house. Robin thought that the "Rent-a-dog" (we were dog-sitting) knocked over one of the big cabinets upstairs, so she "asked" me to check the house to make sure everyone and everything was okay (apparently that is a man's job). I thought it might have been either a monster thunderclap, a bomb, a plane crash or a major meteorite strike near here. But when we didn't hear any sirens or see any fires, etc, we just went back to bed.

We later discovered that minor to moderate earthquakes happen in this area every one to three years. For us it was kinda cool because no one was hurt. Having grown up in southern Indiana, I experienced a couple of minor tremors, but none that woke me up.