EARTHQUAKE!!!
i just experienced my first real earthquake!
The scene: It's about 11:45 in the morning. I am sitting on the couch, watching "How the Earth Was Made" on the Discovery channel and reading the Image section of the Sunday LA Times. All of a sudden I hear a big rumbling, but at first I thought it was the upstairs neighbors doing something crazy (they sound like they move furniture at all hours of the day). Then it all seemed to happen simultaneously: I watched the bowl of anniversary flowers shuttle and jump across the top of the bookshelf, I heard something fall and break from the kitchen, and it dawned on me that this was an earthquake. It didn't feel real, but all I could think to do was run into the kitchen and hold the shelves steady to keep my breakables from falling. It sounded like loud thunder and I could hear other things falling (Michael's stacks of CDs by the front door)...and then it was over. It lasted for several seconds, and when it stopped I realized how hard my heart was pounding.
It was a 5.4-magnitude quake, centered in Chino Hills, which is about 15 miles east of where we live. Michael wasn't able to get in touch with me for about a half-hour because the phone lines were all jammed up, but his neighbor, Stan, came over to check on me after a while. We had met in the laundry room the other day, and after I opened the front door he said, "It just dawned on me that you're from Florida and probably haven't ever experienced anything like this before!" I thought that was incredibly nice of him to make sure I was okay and not rattled, although I think that makes it twice now that he's seen me wearing a housedress with no makeup on and dirty hair pulled back. He asked if anything broke, but the only casualty was a bottle of cinnamon schnapps (out of all the liquor Michael has, I'm glad that's the one that broke). Throughout the rest of the apartment, a few things fell over but nothing else broke.
So there we go! My first relatively big earthquake! Now I know that I should have gone outside in the apartment complex courtyard, but all's well that ends well. I was actually more excited than scared, actually. Does that make me crazy?
The scene: It's about 11:45 in the morning. I am sitting on the couch, watching "How the Earth Was Made" on the Discovery channel and reading the Image section of the Sunday LA Times. All of a sudden I hear a big rumbling, but at first I thought it was the upstairs neighbors doing something crazy (they sound like they move furniture at all hours of the day). Then it all seemed to happen simultaneously: I watched the bowl of anniversary flowers shuttle and jump across the top of the bookshelf, I heard something fall and break from the kitchen, and it dawned on me that this was an earthquake. It didn't feel real, but all I could think to do was run into the kitchen and hold the shelves steady to keep my breakables from falling. It sounded like loud thunder and I could hear other things falling (Michael's stacks of CDs by the front door)...and then it was over. It lasted for several seconds, and when it stopped I realized how hard my heart was pounding.
It was a 5.4-magnitude quake, centered in Chino Hills, which is about 15 miles east of where we live. Michael wasn't able to get in touch with me for about a half-hour because the phone lines were all jammed up, but his neighbor, Stan, came over to check on me after a while. We had met in the laundry room the other day, and after I opened the front door he said, "It just dawned on me that you're from Florida and probably haven't ever experienced anything like this before!" I thought that was incredibly nice of him to make sure I was okay and not rattled, although I think that makes it twice now that he's seen me wearing a housedress with no makeup on and dirty hair pulled back. He asked if anything broke, but the only casualty was a bottle of cinnamon schnapps (out of all the liquor Michael has, I'm glad that's the one that broke). Throughout the rest of the apartment, a few things fell over but nothing else broke.
So there we go! My first relatively big earthquake! Now I know that I should have gone outside in the apartment complex courtyard, but all's well that ends well. I was actually more excited than scared, actually. Does that make me crazy?