Earthquake

Yup, Earthquake.

Seriously, Earthquake.

Apparently there was one our first weekend here but I slept through it. My friends told me that it sort of feels like a truck is slamming into your building. Problem is, we live on a pretty busy, wide street and trucks are going by all the time. They don't slam into the building, but you can often "feel" them even though our apartment is at the back of the building.

Last night it was a little more intense than that.

Again, I was asleep, but this time I woke up. It was around 1 in the morning and as SMS put it, it was like a 500lb man jumped up and down in the apartment above us. Apparently it was a 4.5 and it was centered about 15-20 miles north of us. I was mostly asleep and my first thought was, "Oh this swaying is nice," like I was on a boat or something. It wasn't until I woke up this morning that I realized how scary it really is, especially because we are leaving for 5 days today and this could be a precursor to something larger. Luckily a friend of ours is coming from back east to stay at our place while we are gone, but I do worry about the monsters...

During college I was petrified of earthquakes. Over winter break of my freshman year I watched as the coverage of the Northridge Earthquake showed a woman on an overpass, her car half on a roadway, half hanging off into the abyss. I sorta freaked out. I mean, you are driving along and all of a sudden there's no road in front of you, that's not cool. I remember thinking, "Why in the world would they build a major city on a major fault line?!"

But when we were considering moving to LA, it didn't even cross mind...until we had already decided. And then I had a moment of panic, but it was too late. The decision had been made, earthquakes be damned.

Yeah, right.

I did have a strange feeling as I fell back to sleep last night...As a kid I was really into plate tectonics. I understand how and why earthquakes happen - I understand that they are natural. The quake last night made me feel more connected to the earth just like driving stick makes me feel more connected to the road. So, living on the East Coast: driving automatic; living on the West Coast: manual transmissions, baby.