Earthquake

update: There was an aftershock, but it was only in the magnitude 2 range.

WOO! Earthquake!

It's been a good 30 minutes, now, so I have real data to give you. About 90 miles SW of here, as the crow flies, in Mineral, VA there was an 5.9 magnitude earthquake. That's NW of Richmond about 45 miles. 

I was in my bedroom reading when it hit. There was a rumbling and the bed started squeaking. I thought that my amateur woodworking skills on the attic had come back to bite me in the ass. The fear of 17 years of comic books and 22 years of computers coming down on your head are a much bigger motivator than a simple earthquake. 

It wasn't until I was on the other side of the bedroom door that I realized something else was going on. For one thing the bedroom ceiling was still intact but there were still loud, rumbling, sound effects going on. Then I realized that it must be an earthquake and the door frame right in front of me would be the best place to hang out. Things fell off the shelf in the office (stack of floppy disks) and a bottle fell of the stairs going up to the attic. Downstairs, some boards fell over. 

So I put on some pants and decided to get out of the house for a few minutes. Gandolf was flapping her wings and making nervous ticking sounds. I put a leash on her and we headed out.

The Howard University office building across the street had emptied out on the sidewalk. Everybody was milling about and talking excitedly. Everybody suddenly much more willing to talk to strangers. 

I sent a text and a mass e-mail and went back inside. The news sites were being hammered and were running super slow. Worse if you're on your phone. 

This is the second earthquake I've known about since moving to DC. The previous one I mistook for an overloaded cart being pushed around one floor up. The Colonel thought it was the landscapers dumping another load of boulders. It took listening to the news the next day to realize it was something else.