Hello Don and Beth,
Don..."wife in suburbia" made it through the tornado outbreak..I think I posted that she got to spend an hour in the local Target while all the cars outside got dented by hail.
Beth...cool..you make one person who has respect for me. I was trying to get some respect at the dinner for the speaker at the Friday talk...thought I would try putting bottle caps over my eyes, with my glasses on top...there were 2 problems:
1: I could not see
2: No one was impressed (except me...I thought this was pretty amusing).I'll have to do the "napkin trick" next time.

Oh, yeah, the point..actually, I came over at to earthwaves after checking the quakes and was going to post on these...the fact the are repeating rather than just one (and small aftershocks) seems unusual to me for this area in the last 10 or 18 years. First...they used Channel Islands Beach for a reference...that is on the mainland somewhere, I think. These are S of Anacapa Island. They are far enough south that they are not on the Malibu Coast-Santa Cruz Island fault...so whatever is popping is not going to run off right down Santa Monica Blvd (which is where J. Dolan figured out that the Santa Monica fault active surface strand ran..). They are closer to the NW-SE Santa Cruz-Catalina Ridge right lateral strand of the San Clemente fault system (a mouthfull). But, they are locating a little west...could be mislocation....but there are thrust faults back there....I have not seen a focal mechanism for any of these 3 M3s.

As for the northern Islands...I've spent a lot of time on these, especially Santa Cruz Island, and have lots of stories...such as the underground fur creature (true, I and another geologist both saw this at distance of 3 m), the fornicating U Cal Santa Cruz students (second hand), the woman in green and the man in the brown suit ghost stories (first is 3rd hand, 2nd is 2nd hand (meaning I talked to a person who saw hom/it).
cool...being semi-anonymous allows me to post such stories.
But, I better get to work..late start today
Chris