Mother Nature strikes again

I'm sitting on my wonderful day bed.  Loungin'.  Switching back and forth from survival of a half

 ton teenager and monster in law...when all of a sudden my violin bow flies off my music stand.  What?  I feel my room shaking.  I wonder if the people upstairs are exercising again.  I think, wow they must be doing major jumping jacks.  Then I realize...EARTHQUAKEEEEEE!  I run to my bedroom door and hear Annie yelling JEANNNNNN.  I open the door and Annie

 is standing in the other doorway.  Linn is walking from the couch going "huh...get under a desk!"  and then it stops.  Annie and I are frozen in place under our doorways for at least 10 minutes after it stops.  wow - my FIRST EARTHQUAKE.  I do NOT like it.  It was 5.0 by the way.  By Hawthorne.  

I get a bbm right away from Rob.  Thanks Rob!  I wonder what I would have done if I was by myself.  I'm SO GLAD I HAVE ROOMIES!!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU!  Yes - I am a California newbie.  I survived!  YES!  AWESOME!  

I did also have another first last year.  My first 'almost' tornado.  Can you believe we had a shlew of tornadoes in the DC/NOVA area?  Yeah I didn't know tornadoes came to our area.  (I guess not my area anymore).  I was in my office in Reston on the 9th floor.  Security sends out an email about the tornado watch in the city right south of us.  I didn't read the email until I heard a lot of shocked reactions to the email.  Then I proceed to read the email,  turn around and look out the window and THIS is what the sky looks like!  (This I googled this picure, it wasn't really the sky 

at that moment).  I have never seen anything like it.  I start to again...freak out!  The tornado is coming!  We are told to evacuate...but only to the lobby where the elevators are.  WHAT?  We are not allowed to go in the elevators or even go down stairwell.  Wonderful!  What kind of evacuation is that?  We are only supposed to stay away from the windows.  I was definitely freaking out.  I started texting people to call my mom if anything happens!  Crazy.

I do also remember my first huge hurricane.  Hurricane Hugo. I was in NY.  Sitting in the kitchen in the dark all night watching the trees in my backyard fall down.  If you're supposed to stay away from windows during a hurricane, my parents were definitely not informed.  Because we sat at that kitchen table all night right in front of our HUGE bay window with a forest as our backyard.  Hugo was in 1989.  According to wikipedia it was a Category 5 hurricane causing $7 billion of damage in the United States. I don't know what that really means, but all I know is that we had a lot of fallen trees and no power.

All I have to say is that I am not looking forward to the next earthquake.