This was actually my second earthquake. When I was about 12, I was in an earthquake in San Francisco when I was visiting Orin. He was at work, and I was playing a computer game called Zak McCracken. l loved that game, but it did have a problem. Every once in awhile, Zak would get stuck and he'd just be walking into a wall over and over. And you'd just have to restart the computer. Back in those days, you'd do this by pushing the big, red "RESET" button on the CPU. So I did that.
Just as I did that, the building started shaking, I heard a rumbling, car alarms outside started going off, and I thought, "Holy crap! I just wanted to start Zak over!" A few seconds later, the phone rang. It was Orin. "You okay, kid?"
Wait - what? He's all the way at work and he ALREADY KNOWS what I did??????
"Yeah..? I'm okay."
"Congratulations. You've lived through your first earthquake."
"Heh. Ohhhhhhh."
And then I told him I thought I had caused it all.
Yesterday, Ria was getting ready to leave. We were sitting on the couch when the rumbling noise started and the building began to shake. The noise and the shaking steadily got louder/noticeably more... uh, shaky, and I looked at Ria and said, "Are we having an EARTHQUAKE?"
There are some construction workers on my block, working on the top dome of the church. I heard one of them shout, just as the dog next door began barking like crazy, and Felix scampered off of his window ledge and started doing that half-crawling/half-walking thing cats do when they're frightened. Poor guy. (Although he recovered quite quickly when I crunched his treat bag.)
I heard that the 'quake was felt from NC to Canada and as far west as western Ohio. Any good stories?
Angie thought 2 subway cars crashed - and her friends wanted to go down there.
ReplyDeleteMy brother pointed out that all the news pictures had everyone milling around outside - he's like what happened to take cover during an earthquake??