What the hell was that?

I'm sure you know by now that an earthquake rattled the East Coast yesterday afternoon. Thankfully, it appears that although the 5.8 magnitude quake was strong enough to do some damage it didn't do nearly the damage it could have caused elsewhere.

I, however, failed miserably at all forms of disaster preparedness. The rattling came in two waves with the second being the more powerful wave. At first one of my co-workers and I looked at each other and thought, "what the hell is that?" Then, when the second wave hit most of my co-workers ran for a doorframe and looked somewhat prepared. Like an idiot, I ran to the window to see what the hell was going on. Finally when I looked outside and didn't see the end of the world coming at me, rather that the trees and light posts were shaking too, I figured out what the heck was going on.

I'm probably to blame for the cup of water that was spilled all over my desk. I still maintain that the quake was the sole responsible party for the flipped picture frames.

Then the building was evacuated, no one could get a darn cell call out, text messages were getting dropped, yet I could post on Facebook with zero problems. Note to self: if the end of the world comes, get the word out quickly via Facebook. I really should buy the hubs a smart phone already so he can see my last post. I couldn't get ahold of him for 30 minutes and that bugged me.

While marooned outside everyone seemed in good spirits as news was traveling in that there wasn't extensive damage. Relief overcame pockets of individuals as one heard from so-and-so that so-and-so was fine. But then, we all saw the look of panic on one of our co-workers faces.

She couldn't reach her husband. She couldn't reach her daughter's school. She couldn't reach anyone.

Unfortunately, she'd been in that very same spot before except the last time the world went crazy her daughter was at a daycare facility in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 where she had been dropped off just an hour before by her dad, who worked there. Seeing that look of panic on my co-worker's face really brought everything back together. That's when I felt really bad for everyone in downtown DC, who probably thought something a lot worse was happening. Many people are already on edge because the tenth anniversary of 9/11 is coming up and the ground shaking made people start to think the worst was happening.

Fortunately, cell service came back in. Everyone was fine. The mood quickly lightened and later in the day my formerly-freaked-out co-worker sent this along to cheer everyone up:





I'm happy to report that when I finally got home (note to self: mass transit sucks during any type of disturbance) all we had were a few upturned picture frames and items. The dogs didn't even soil anywhere and Jewels didn't look like she spent all afternoon growling at the ground.