Saturday, July 6, 2019

Not my Fault


...but I felt it anyhow.

This may sound crazy—after all, considering how head over heels I am about family history—but there I was last night, hot on the trail of another unidentified fourth cousin, when a disorienting feeling at the back of my head made me look up to regain my bearings. Don't think it was because I had lost it to genealogy. Sure enough, we were having an earthquake.

It started. And rolled. And kept going—longer than I remember these things carrying on. It's been a while since I last experienced an earthquake, despite being a California resident for decades now. The first time, at least, since being on social media.

So what did I do? Drop, cover, and hold on? Of course not. I watched the venetian blinds sway away from the window sills and the rocking chair begin rocking—with no one in it—and promptly posted my observances on Facebook. And Twitter.

Half an hour later, I still was chatting about earthquake observances with friends and family I hadn't talked to in months, and reading all the hashtag-identified earthquake comments of strangers near and far. Apparently, the government website dedicated to real-time mapping of earthquake occurrences must have crashed, because there was no access, so we Californians collectively did what anyone would do in an information vacuum: create our own news on social media.

Meanwhile, my research quest to organize my closest DNA matches took a back burner, as did the time to spend on today's post.

This has not been the only event this week to sabotage my writing and research, as I'll be discussing tomorrow. The week started off last Sunday with a tree cracking and falling on a power line, taking with it the juice to supply the work of an entire neighborhood for the next six hours. Guess which time slot was slated for blog writing that day?!

And we close the week—almost—with a second earthquake, one which garnered "I felt it" remarks from people as far away as Nevada and other places 350 miles from the action.

Perhaps the moral of such a story is to write my blog posts earlier in the day—I do know someone who would appreciate that strategy—but who's to say there wouldn't be another unexpected upheaval? After all, we certainly don't live anywhere near the infamous San Andreas Fault. How could someone like me have predicted such an outcome?

12 comments:

  1. Wow, exciting night! Glad you are safe. We live in tornado country. My parents would call us to see if we were cowering in the basement (like we should) - nope, we would be on the front porch taking pictures of the clouds just like all of our neighbors LOL. Stay safe!

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    1. Funny...my family was just discussing this very thing last night: knowing friends in the midwest who think first of their phones and cameras when the warning comes in about an approaching tornado! It's that giddy curiosity that will do us in someday, I'm sure.

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  2. It's been quite the year for rotten weather and natural disasters. I was rocking and rolling on a Sunday afternoon during Newspapers.com's free access weekend when the windows turned dark and the worst thunderstorm in memory hit Dallas. We lost power for two days. I was smack in the middle of sucessfully chasing rabbits down their rabbit hole. Oh, well.

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    1. Two days?!?! Oh, Kathy, you have my sympathies. Hope you were able to retrace your way down those rabbit holes...

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  3. "write my blog posts earlier in the day"? What kind of wet blanket would endorse THAT strategy?

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  4. Only YOU wouldn’t let an earthquake get in the way of blogging. Glad to know you’re ok.

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    1. Thanks, Wendy! Yes, we are all fine, this far north. Not sure how fine the folks near Ridgecrest are, though our relatives down south say everything is mostly fine, thankfully.

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  5. I have lived first in SoCal and now in Alabama for decades. Give me earthquakes over tornadoes any day. Otherwise, AL is great.

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    1. Yeah, I'm not sure how well I'd take to tornadoes myself, Lisa. Glad Alabama is great in the non-tornado category. I guess wherever home is can be the best place of all.

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  6. Glad you are okay I thought of you when I heard about the earthquakes:)

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    1. Thanks for thinking of me, Far Side. Of course, it is always a weird feeling to go through a quake, but after it was over, we didn't see any signs of structural damage. We are, after all, 350 miles away from the epicenter--making it even more awe-inspiring to consider we felt the thing from that far away.

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