East Coast Earthquake

Just when  I thought my life was too boring for words, I decided to do something blogworthy:  go down to the National Mall and take a look at the brand new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, not yet dedicated but nonetheless open to the public.  And what should happen when I got there?  As I sat down on the marble wall marking the entrance to the memorial, I felt a rumble and a wave, my only thought being "does the metro go under this?"  In a matter of minutes, I learned that we'd just experienced an earthquake, a 5.9 earthquake centered in tiny Mineral, Virginia but felt all up and down the East Coast and apparently as far west as Toronto.

There are reports of mild to moderate damage around town and a general skittishness, not surprising in a region that experienced a direct hit on 9/11 and was later terrorized by a still undetermined lunatic sending anthrax through the mail and a pair of snipers who killed more than a dozen people over several weeks.  So maybe it wasn't the big one, and maybe it was just business as usual for folks from the West Coast but personally I don't mind if the federal government and city officials want to be a bit cautious about the status of buildings, roads and bridges.  (Of course tell that to my husband whose subway ride home took almost two hours yesterday.)

Here on the home front, there's little evidence of the event.  No broken glass or tchotchkes.  No hairline cracks in the walls.  The chimney is still standing.  Only when I left the house around 12:30, these photos on the wall above my computer were perfectly squared up and now?

I think I can handle it.