It’s funny that I completely forgot to blog about this when it happened.
Yesterday at a little before 2:00 PM I was sitting at my desk. I was deep in thought about an up-coming event. I was thinking hard about how I was going to solve an interesting challenge with a few Herbie cars.
I heard some sounds that I would describe as a quiet, but deep, booming. Like you might feel/hear if someone was running down a hallway next to the room you were in. Then everything went really quiet and my chair started to shake. For a second I actually thought somebody in the next cubicle over was just jumping around or something. Sometimes, up here on the entertainment floor, people do strange things. Then… the shaking got a little heavier and it was clear that this was an earthquake.
I could hear a few surprised “is that an earthquake?” sort of noises coming from some other cubicles in the area. Then all of the sudden my heart started to pound. You see… I have been in many kinds of weather related scary situations. A hurricane, driving in blizzards, torrential rain, flooding… but none of them made me as shaky as this quake (no pun indented). It honestly made my palms sweat.
I spun my chair around and contemplated running to a doorway while I sucked my thumb and cried like a little girl. Thankfully my adult brain kicked into gear as I asked my cell mate cubicle roomie if he had been in an earthquake before. He’s lived in CA all his life so he laughed a bit and said cool as a cucumber “ok… this is where it’s either going to go away, or get worse” I gulped dryly and he said “ok, it’s over”. But friends… it wasn’t over. The building was still rocking back and forth when he said that. I was still fighting off the thumb sucking when it finally stopped.
All in all it was about 30 seconds out of my life. It was my first quake (this point is actually not true since there was one on Sunday… but I was asleep when it happened and didn’t believe Janey when she told me about it) and it convinced me that I should stock up on bottled water and gasoline. Maybe I will start hoarding canned goods as well.
For now though friends, I am ok. No more shaking for me, and life is back to normal.
Thanks for reading.
R.