See the photo to the right? Do you know what that is? You probably don't recognize it, but it's matzoh. Homemade matzoh to be exact. That's right, I made my own matzoh, so you'll have to forgive me if it doesn't look perfect.

Now you may be asking yourself, why would Dave make his own matzoh? He's not the most observant Jew and I've never seen him buy matzoh, let alone make it. Well, I'll tell you why. Because there is absolutely NO MATZOH in all of San Francisco! Seriously. We're talking not a single piece of unleavened bread to be found. The handful of grocery stores that we called put the blame on a distributor. Maybe so, but I can guarantee that they never run out of matzoh in NY. Clearly there aren't enough Jews out here. No wonder they can't make a decent bagel.

We've already established that I'm not Mr. Super Jew, but Lyla goes to preschool at the JCC and she's been singing Passover-related songs for weeks now. The guy from Comcast Cable got treated to the following ditty last week:

"Hamen. Hamen. The Jews will never bow down. NO THEY WON'T!"

He probably thinks we're part of some cult. In any case, all of Lyla's singing and story telling got Tracy all psyched up to do a seder. Next thing you know we're on the hunt for matzoh. Admittedly, we waited until the last minute. But still, not one box to be found?!

All kidding aside, it has actually been kind of cool to listen to Lyla spout off about all the Jewish stuff she's learning at school. Through her, I guess I'm reliving my days in Hebrew school way back when. Goodness, I'm getting all verklempt! I can't ever see us getting all religious or anything, but maybe Lyla's one year at the JCC will give us enough of a kick in the ass to at least celebrate holidays other than just Hanukkah.

Lest people's expectations (mom, dad .. this means you) start getting too high, I should point out the second photo, our seder plate. The orange thing is a shankbone that Lyla cut out of paper. :-)

Potrero Hill is a relatively fog free neighborhood in San Francisco, but we've become used to seeing the fog creep in to the surrounding parts of the city on many mornings. Earlier this week the fog was snaking right through the buildings downtown. Very creepy effect.

Today was a first though. I'd never seen the fog come all the way up the hill. As you can see from the picture below, we normally have a great view of the entire downtown area and the Bay bridge. This morning we could barely see past our neighbor's house.

They say that when Potrero Hill is foggy, the entire city is foggy. That was definitely the case this morning!

Got my first taste of what an earthquake is like last night. Its quite likely that there have been many small ones since I've been out in San Francisco, but they've been so small that I was never sure it was actually the real thing.

No question about it last night though! At first it just started out as a loud rumbling noise that I thought might have just been a truck going by the house. Then I felt a little vibration for a few seconds. After that the house actually started to shake! Not violently enough for anything to fall, but I could definitely see the TV moving. After just a few seconds, the novelty changed into concern that it was going to continue to get worse. Just as I got up out of my chair to go downstairs to get Tracy and the kids, it was over.

When I got down to Lyla's room, she and Tracy were completely oblivious. They didn't feel anything. At a 5.6, it was apparently a decent sized quake, but our neighborhood is sitting on solid bedrock so we didn't feel it as strongly as other people did.

This one was no big deal, but I can see how a stronger one that lasted longer would definitely be a pretty disconcerting experience.

---

(CNN) -- A moderate earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.6 struck Northern California Tuesday night, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake's epicenter was about five miles north-northeast of Alum Rock, California, and nine miles northeast of San Jose's City Hall, the USGS said. It hit at 8:04 p.m. (11:04 p.m. ET).

There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties. Rafael Abreu of the USGS said that a 5.6 quake was considered moderate but could provide "a pretty strong jolt."

The earthquake's epicenter was 5.7 miles below the Earth's surface. Earthquakes centered close to the surface produce stronger shaking and generally can cause more damage than those farther underground.

Alum Rock is 50 miles southeast of San Francisco.

The quake was centered in the Diablo Range foothills, not far from the home of the Mayor, Chuck Reed, The Associated Press reported.

"It was a pretty strong ride here, a lot of shaking but nothing broken," Reed told the AP in a phone interview. "I've talked to a few people, and we have no reports of injuries or damage. There was a lot of shaking, but it wasn't the big one."

Rod Foo, who resides in southern San Jose about 10 miles from the quake's center, told the news agency that the his home did not lose power or phone service.

"I could hear it coming up the street before it hit the house," Foo told the AP. "I thought it was the kids messing around at first; then I felt the house shaking and I knew it was an earthquake. ... It was rattling for a long time and really loud."

Today marks three weeks out in San Francisco and all I can say is that its been borderline insanity.

I got out to San Francisco on the 8th and after one night at Shane's house, I spent the next eight nights on an air mattress in the new house. Just me, one of the cats (Lasher) and a laptop, although my new 46" LCD TV did show up after a few days to keep me company as well! Just minutes after walking into the house for the first time on Friday the 9th, I got a call from the Mayflower driver saying that he would be there the following Tuesday morning to deliver our stuff. I was pretty psyched, as this was the first day in the delivery window they had given us.

The goal of me being out in San Fran by myself was to get the place as ready as possible before Tracy and the kids arrived, and I certainly did the best I could. I had painters out to paint the kids's room, an electrician out to fix wiring problems, I installed custom closets, had a security system installed, had all of the utilities set up, in addition to a dozen other small projects. I also bought a car and found office space. Not bad for the first week!

Over the weekend I bought plane tickets for me to go out to St. Louis Friday the 17th to pick up the family and bring them out to San Fran. I figured that would give me three days to get most of the unpacking done. I woke up bright and early Tuesday morning to get ready for the movers. My phone rang at 7:30am and, instead of telling me he was out front, the driver informs me that he's not coming until Friday. He broke down in Reno over the weekend. Someone was supposed to have called me. Guess that someone forgot.

Needless to say, I was pissed. In addition to more nights on the air mattress, I've got a 2:05pm flight to St. Louis on Friday with movers now coming that morning. My options were to change the flights, which would have cost me a small fortune, or to pray that the movers got there on time and got everything unloaded in time for me to make the flight. I decided to roll the dice, which obviously meant that instead of everything being unpacked when the family arrived, nothing would be unpacked.

Fast forward to Friday morning. Again I get a call from the driver first thing in the morning. Again I'm expecting him to tell me he's out front. Again I'm disappointed. He says that he can't get his rig up the hills in my neighborhood. Probably an issue that would have been good to identify before the morning of the delivery. Have they never delivered to San Francisco before?! He said that they would have to transfer my load to a smaller truck to shuttle it up to the house.

At this point I figured I was screwed and was going to have to cancel all the flights. Best case I'd be getting my stuff later that day. I will give him credit, though, for dealing with the situation pretty quickly. I get a call from him three hours later, at 10:30am, and this time he finally is in fact in front of my house ready to deliver.

I made it clear to the driver that I had a flight to catch and that time was of the essence, but he was way out of shape and only had one other guy helping him. As the morning went on, I kept revising my drop-dead time for having to leave for the airport in order to make my 2:05 flight.

The last item was brought into the house at 1:20pm. I signed the papers, rushed them out the door, and nearly ran them over in the driveway as I sped off to the airport. All I had with me was an empty duffel bag to help bring stuff back. Since my return flight was 9:15am the next morning, I wouldn't need much. By some miracle, I actually made my flight. Got the car parked, cut to the front of the ticketing and security lines, and then sprinted through the terminal in my socks to get to the gate. Talk about a stressful day.

Of course, my connecting flight in Denver was delayed a couple of hours so, as usual, I got to spend some quality time in the Denver airport. Didn't get to St. Louis until midnight. Despite not getting much sleep, the next morning was great because I hadn't seen Tracy and the kids for almost two weeks. We got everyone packed up and out the door at the crack of dawn and were on our way to San Fran. I had a full nine hours in St. Louis. :-)

Needless to say, the following week was total chaos as we tried to get unpacked and get Tracy acclimated to her new surroundings. We've still got a ways to go, but most of the boxes are gone and the place looks more like a home than a war zone. We got Tracy a GPS for the car so she can navigate her way around town. San Francisco, especially our neighborhood, is much more of a car-oriented town than Manhattan and that's been a big adjustment for her.

Despite all the chaos we've managed to have some fun. We went over to Golden Gate Park one weekend and to a place called Children's Fairyland over in the East Bay last weekend. We're entering the warm season here in SF so the weather has been awesome. Lyla seems to be adjusting very easily. She loves the new house with her decked out pink room and a back yard to play in. She starts her new school on Tuesday, and I suspect that will be a little more problematic.

Definitely not an experience I'd like to go through again any time soon, but now that the worst is over I'm starting to get excited about exploring the area.