Other facets (haha, little gem pun there) of my life have greatly compromised my time here in the past month. But I am compelled to finally check in today. So go ahead, ask me what’s shakin’.
I’ll tell you what’s been shaking.The house. The light fixtures. The trees, the plants, the stuff on the clothesline, the walls, the ground, the city. And while you probably already know all about it from the science point of view, here’s what it was like on my end.
About 15 hours ago (11:42 pst) , things here did indeed start shaking. And shaking. And shaking. Or so it seemed, although USGS-CalTech reports say that yesterday’s 5.4 Chino Hills earthquake lasted only 20-30 seconds. However, when you are in the middle of an earthquake it’s like “Hello! Are you planning on stopping any time soon? Should I get into the bloody closet now or is there really no point because you are either poised to stop right now or else bring the entire building down on me before I push the jackets out of the way?”
And what’s this about animals sensing that earthquakes are coming? My cats always seem to look totally taken by surprise when an earthquake strikes. In fact, they look at me accusingly like it’s MY fault. One was particularly vocal to me about that fact and complained to me at length about his unhappiness at being woken up in this alarming manner.
Where I live I haven’t felt any of the numerous after-shocks people are feeling closer to the epicenter, nor was there any damage, so I can be a bit cavalier. It happened, it’s over, and I know native Californians who are so blasé about California’s seismic occurrences that they are sorry they were in the car at the time and didn’t feel it. “Darn!” said one friend on Twitter. “I missed it!”
In fact, social media on the web being what it is, within seconds friends were reporting in from as far north as Santa Barbara to as far south as San Diego. Friends in England and Switzerland IM’d to see if we were ok. Truth is, while I am glad it was not more serious, those many blips on the seismograph really were just a blip and half for us.
But at least the tourists sure have something to talk about 🙂
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