Tuesday, August 23, 2011

our day

Our day started like any other day.  We played at home, went to the library, visited my Nanny, and I had a doctor's appointment.  It wasn't until Bryce was all settled into his nap that our day took a turn.  I started to hear a loud noise upstairs and would have thought Bryce was barreling down the stairs if he weighed 100 more pounds.  I ran up to check on him and he was sound asleep.  Then I thought maybe a storm had come up and the wind was really bad.  Nope, the leaves weren't moving.  Then I thought it sounded like a dump truck full of rocks at the elementary school behind our house (last summer our house shook all day while they built a new parking lot).  It wasn't until the blinds stopped banging in the windows and the house got quiet that I realized I had just experienced an earthquake!  That's right, 5.8 to be exact.  You can see on the map below where the epicenter was.  We live just north of Richmond, about 30 miles from the epicenter.  The last earthquake I felt was in 2003 when I was taking a college exam.  It was only a 4.5 and didn't even compare to what I felt today! 


I called Jason as soon as it was over and he was evacuating the building at his work.  I have to admit, it never crossed my mind to grab Bryce and go outside.  I honestly had no idea what was going on until it was all over.  And it wasn't like it lasted a few seconds, it was like 30 seconds.  I watched the news all afternoon to get the latest updates.  It seems as though there was damage to homes and buildings, but no injuries.  PTL!  Things have settled down and we had a normal evening.  My Nanny took us out to dinner tonight and insisted on getting ice cream afterwards.  We went to Bruster's and they had my all time favorite ice cream (coconut chip).  They NEVER have it.  I only ended up eating half of it.  I barely even got to the cone! 


The weather today was unseasonably cool so we took advantage of the low temperatures and low humidity and went on a walk tonight.  I would do anything to have weather like this ALL the time!


Very glad today ended up fine and we luckily have not felt any of the aftershocks.  Hopefully the worst is behind us and we won't have anything major tonight or tomorrow!

1 comment:

Melissa said...

Glad everything's fine for you too! I didn't think of moving until they told us to get out of the building (I was setting up my classroom). It was really scary there though...old buildings aren't fun during earthquakes.