Everything, as it turns out. We had an earthquake this morning, 5.2 on the richter scale. Around 4:37 this morning, I felt the bed shake and a clinking noise. The noise was Ken's glasses hitting a drinking glass on his bedside table (I think) and the shaking was, um, the earth. Actually, my first thought was, "Is Kahlua having a seizure?" because, well, that's basically how Bailey died in front of us, and we all know how disorienting waking up from a dead sleep can be. I looked at the foot of the bed, but Kahlua wasn't there; he was sitting in the middle of the bedroom, minding his own business. Morgan lay sleeping at my side, and Moonshine was nowhere to be found. I said, "Is it an earthquake?" and Ken said, "No, it's the glasses clinking," because he had that whole disoriented thing happening, too. I was more "WTF?" than scared. It lasted I dunno, maybe 15 or 20 seconds, then it stopped. Ken promptly fell back to sleep. I lay awake for a bit thinking about the New Madrid fault line. I grew up in the St. Louis area, and they taught us about it in school, so of course the thoughts running through my head was "Holy crap, St. Louis is in ruins" and "Hope my family's okay" and "Ken's too busy with finals to be dealing with this now." (Ken works for an agency that coordinates Illinois law enforcement in an emergency.) This is the seismic zone that caused the quake today. If I have a handle on the way these things work, if New Madrid had a big quake, this fault line would be affected, too.
Don't worry, everyone is okay here. It was a weird 20 seconds, though. Clearly, the end is near.
2 comments:
So you guys experience an earthquake before we do? You're in Illinois and we're in LA!
I couldn't believe it when I heard. 5.2.
I read this in the LA times (quoted from someone who lives in Olney): "I thought another meth lab blew up." Only in Central Illinois do you hear a comment like that!
Did anything fall off of shelves or cabinets? I think if we had one here we would have so much stuff on the floor instead of where it should be.
I keep thinking we need to get an earthquake kit together. It's kind of like an emergency kit for snow storms; except you need one in the car and at home in case you need to run out of the house because the ceiling's falling.
The good news is that earthquakes in the midwest happen about every 40 years. I think you're done for a while. Unless, of course, you've really pissed off Mother Nature!
Glad everything's OK!
More later!
Nothing fell or broke or anything, which is good. An earthquake kit isn't a bad idea.
The "meth lab blowing up" bit is pretty good, and you're right, it's totally a central IL idea.
I don't know about it being the last one for awhile ... I have sort of a bad feeling about it. I can't really explain it other than I think we'll have another one. The bad thing is we can't count on the cats to let us know the shit's about to hit the fan; the furry bums didn't act weird at all. Of course, they could have acted weird right before and we missed it since we were sleeping.
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