5.6
I lived through my first earthquake around 8:30 this morning.
I finally feel like a real Californian.
I'm sure there have been other quakes during my three years living out here, but I don't think I've ever felt one before. This morning, in that half awake/half asleep state, my bed started shaking. Excited, I looked around but sadly, I was still alone. No nookie for Johnnie. I at first thought a truck was passing by, but I live on a little side street that's not going to be on any trucking route. It could have been a plane flying a little too low heading to the Burbank airport. It lasted for a few seconds and then that was it...I went back to sleep figuring it was just my imagination.
When I woke up for real, I went to my computer and had a couple of emails from friends "did you feel the earthquake this morning?" So it was an earthquake and looking it up on Yahoo, I saw that it was 5.6 and took place out by Palm Springs and could be felt as far south as San Diego all the way to Los Angeles.
Cool.
I always wondered if I would be scared or how to feel during one of these things. If you grew up out here I would think it's second nature. But the forces of nature I'm used to deal with snow and hurricane winds. I don't like the feeling of the earth moving and there's nothing you can do about it but ride it out. I also didn't want my Marx Bros. framed and matted movie poster to fall and give me an El Kabong on the noggin.
But apparently my reaction was the same to an earthquake as it is to most facets of my life. Huh, cool. And then I went back to sleep.
Edit: I did notice that in the past few weeks there were a bunch "what to do in an earthquake" PSAs on the radio. My friend Kurtis actually noticed this as well and it was a topic of discussion last week. Not to mention that the area where the quake hit was supposed to be the location of a "big one" last September as predicted by a seismologist at UCLA. So it appears this probably wasn't a "surprise" to many in the know.
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