Friday, April 18, 2008

I FEEL THE EARTH MOVE UNDER MY FEET

Ok - I know I said I wasn't going to blog anymore until May, but after this morning's early disturbance, I felt compelled to write a small entry. About 4:30AM today, I was awakened by Chris telling me to move the dog away from the bed. Occasionally, Dempsey will position himself against the bed, and if he decides to scratch behind his ear, he shakes the whole bed. I groggily looked over at the dog who was peacefully slumbering in his dog bed and noted that it wasn't him. As the sleep haze cleared a bit, I realized we were having an earthquake.

As we sat up in bed and took it all in, two little faces appeared in our bedroom doorway. Maggie declared, "Someone is shaking my bed!" Aleita looked at her and said, "Me too!" I explained that I thought we were having a small earthquake. They didn't seem particularly scared, just a little confused to have been awakened in such an odd manner. We put them back to bed and they both went back to sleep with no problems.

After I got out of bed at the more reasonable hour of 6AM, I looked on the Internet (honestly, what DID we do before we had computers? Anyone remember???) and saw that the quake was centered near Mount Caramel, Illinois, but was felt as far away as Tennessee, Michigan, Iowa, and northern Georgia. CNN reported that the strongest quake to hit Illinois in any recent time was in 1968 and it was a 5.4 magnitude. Today's was a 5.2 magnitude.

At least everyone will have something interesting to talk about around the water cooler this morning. I am sure everyone will have a story.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

it woke us. it sounded like thunder--twice. Our entire house was swaying and all of the china was rattling. dave and i both woke up, but Freya slept right through it! Our bed felt like a cheap hotel vibrating bed.

Becky said...

I am curious as to how you know what a cheap, vibrating hotel bed feels like. . . :)