Earthquake

I've lived in California all my life. When I think about the natural disasters that plague other parts of the world, I shudder. I would probably panic in the face of a hurricane, tornado, tsunami, etc. But I can totally handle earthquakes. I'm not going to say I'm not afraid of them at all, because let's face it, being near the epicenter of a 7+ earthquake would be scary, and to not be scared of that would be sort of disrespectful. But for the most part, I find earthquakes a little exciting. It's been quite awhile since we had a good sized earthquake.

When today's earthquake hit, I was sitting in my cube on the ninth floor. My cube is sort of in the front corner of the office, so I looked up at the corner of the ceiling and listened to it creek and rattle. I didn't get under my desk - figured it wouldn't hold much anyway. Besides, I've felt stronger, and I was pretty confidant that everything would be fine.

Sure enough, all the news reports said there was no reported damage or injuries. Everything in California is required to be built to withstand more than the 5.4 we had today.

I tried to call Bobby and my parents afterwords, but my cell phone service was out. Bobby's was out too, so I couldn't get a hold of him at all. My mom was closer to the epicenter than I was... told me about how she got under her desk, and we discussed how long it was. It felt similar to the evening news anytime we have any kind of weather outside of "clear, sunny." OMG, it rained!

On my way home I did start to worry a tad. I had recently been saving our empty wine bottles, and arranging them on top of our kitchen cupboards. They are all lined up so you can see the labels. I saw it in a restaurant in Park City, Utah and really liked the way it looked. As I drove, I started wondering if any fell over.

I can just picture one landing on my cat, although he doesn't really spend much time in the kitchen unless I'm preparing food. At least, I don't think he does - I suppose he could be doing anything while I'm away at work, but I usually find him on our bed, the couch, in a half-full laundry basket, or in the backyard. Or on top of Bobby's amp, where he's not supposed to be. But he could have been on one of the chairs in the dining room (he likes it there), and really freaked out as glass bottles tumbled off the cupboards and shattered on the floor. Now he's trapped, because there is glass all over the floor, and his tender little paws...

He seemed fine when I got in the house. Asleep on the bed. The baby gate we bought to keep the kids in the front of the house when they come over had fallen down. It had been leaning against the wall. Oh, and the fire extinguisher in the kitchen was knocked over. But all the bottles above the cupboards didn't appear to have moved at all.