Earthquake

Can you even believe we just had an earthquake here?

"A magnitude-5.8 quake centered in Virginia rocked the East Coast, with tremors felt as far south as North Carolina, as far north as Buffalo and Boston, and as far west as Detroit. " USA Today

It was on August 23, 2011 and it was terrifying.  I haven't seen any real damage from the quake, but it was still scary.  Having never felt an earthquake, my coworkers and I weren't really sure what was happening.  I was with 2 of my coworkers- we had ordered an edible arrangement for our boss, whose birthday had been the day before (but took the day off) and it had just arrived in my office.  We were trying to decide how/when to give it to him.  Suddenly, we felt the room beginning to shake.  Heather's water bottle rippled, much like the glass of water on the dashboard in Jurrasic Park.

Paul opened the door that leads out to the warehouse and it looked and sounded like a tornado was in there- the stacks of baled and boxed metal scrap were swaying, near the tipping point.  The shaking suddenly stopped.  We looked around a little bit and saw the guy who was installing new lights- he was standing as still as he could at the top of his swaying scissor lift.

Heather: "Are you ok?"
Guy on scissor lift: "Uh... Yeah..."
Heather:  "I think you should come down now!"
Guy on scissor lift: "Okay!"

Immediately we were all calling our families to make sure everyone was fine.  Some of us got through, a lot of calls didn't go through.

Aaron was in orientation for his job- they ended early because of the quake.  Since I had the car, I left work just before 3:00 to go get him so he wouldn't be waiting until 5:15 for me to get to him.  I had planned to just drop him off at home and then go back to work for the rest of the work day, but traffic was so bad that we didn't get back to our apartment until about 4:20.  It takes me about 25 minutes in normal traffic to get to work, so I knew that if I went back, I wouldn't even get there until almost 5:00m so I called in and just stayed home.

I'm just glad there was no damage for anyone I know.