This has been a strange week. Neither Todd nor I have ever been in a hurricane or (knowingly) an earthquake. In the course of the past week, we've been in both!
The weirdness started with an earthquake. We live very near the train tracks, so my first instinct was that an especially rumble-y train was moving past. I was at work at the time, and we hopped under our desks for about 15 seconds until the shaking stopped. I was mainly confused--after living in the fault-ridden West for 20+ years, the last place I thought I'd experience my first earthquake was in Virginia!
Todd was at home doing school work. He said it felt like our building was going to fall down--no surprise, it is old and probably not certified for any type of shaking. But amazingly, nothing fell off the walls or the bookshelves. There were 4 or 5 aftershocks, and we felt 2.
The Earthquake was all over the news. West Coasters--especially Californians--made fun of us, but no one was really scared. We were mainly just stunned it had happened!
After The Earthquake came a severe storm warning. We get these all the time. I always tell Todd how weird I think the weather is here. Where we come from, you have rainy, overcast days--or weeks at a time, for people from the Northwest like Todd. Here, there is no such thing as a rainy day. We have violent storms for an hour, then afterward it's sunny and nice again like nothing happened. I don't remember an overcast day. Virginia is weird like that.
We had one of these storms on Thursday, amid news that we should be planning for the End of Days with the pending arrival of Hurricane Irene. Like The Earthquake (but worse). There was rain and wind, but nothing worth speaking of and nothing close to our Thursday storm. We're grateful to be safe and that none of these crazy events did us any harm, but it has been a weird week!
