Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On

"Come on over, Baby. Whole lotta shakin' goin' on." ~ Jerry Lee Lewis

So, have you heard about the earthquake here in Virginia?

If you haven't, you must live in a cave with no contact with the outside world.

I have the dubious honor of being possibly one of a few bloggers who lives close to the epicenter of yesterday's earthquake. Already news media are calling it "The DC earthquake", but in reality it was closer to Richmond, although there are some who claim they felt it all the way to New York, Boston, and even Maine.

Our house is located within 40 miles of Mineral, Virginia, which, in turn, is about 9 miles from the reported center of the quake. My wife's dentist's office is located in Mineral.

Don't ask me why she drives that far to go to the dentist. She's never given me a satisfactory explanation, either.

I was actually browsing Facebook at the time the quake began. It started as a deep rumbling sound. I described it as like a freight train or a low flying aircraft. Immediately after that, the shaking started. My wife said she thought, at first, that the washer was out of balance, but then she quickly remembered the washer wasn't running.

Panicked, she ran out into the backyard, and I got up from my chair and started walking down the hallway, which by then had started rolling in a side-to-side motion. It was like surfing the floor. I stopped at the doorway between the utility room and the hallway where I could see my wife in the back yard through the back door, and stood there until the shaking stopped.

It lasted between 20 and 30 seconds, and then it was over. Kind of exciting for those of us who had never experienced an earthquake before, but nothing--dare I say?--earth shattering.

So, I walked back into our computer room (as we call it) and posted the experience on my Facebook status. Then I looked up the following videos on Youtube and posted them:







Then the other comments started appearing on Facebook. One friend wrote simply, "What's shakin'?"

I wrote, "It's God punishing us for electing Obama."

Comments that followed included, "Obama will blame Bush", "First an earthquake and a hurricane on the way. Well, Obama promised change", "Too bad a big azz crack didn't suck up a few of them in DC!", "It's Obama's new stimulus program to redistribute Earthquakes!", Our forefathers diggin their way out to show us how it's done probably", and, "The Founding Fathers are rolling over in their graves"

This morning, I signed onto Facebook and saw this:

BREAKING NEWS: President Obama has just confirmed that the DC earthquake occurred on a rare and obscure fault-line, apparently known as "Bush's Fault". Obama also announced that the Secret Service and Maxine Waters continue an investigation of the quake's suspicious ties to the TEA Party. Conservatives however have proven that it was caused by the Founding Fathers rolling over in their graves.

All you readers who live outside the tremor zone, don't be fooled. What the media said and what actually happened are two very different things. As I observed later last evening, "20 seconds of event followed by 24 hours of news coverage"

I'm also wondering if some of those reports from New York and further about feeling the quake there aren't a bit overblown. I'm thinking either they are imagining the feeling or they want so badly to be a part of breaking news they simply say they felt it when they didn't.

I can remember more than one instance when a quake struck in a neighboring state, and reports started flowing in about how the tremors were felt in my state, and I never felt anything.

There was no mistaking what we experienced yesterday.

It couldn't have been anything else.

Blogger buddy Tug lives in North Carolina, and he says he felt nothing yesterday, while people in South Carolina claim they did.

Incidentally, We live in a 60 year old house less than 40 miles from the epicenter, yet we sustained no damage or injuries whatsoever.

Oh, a clock fell off out kitchen wall and the battery was dislodged. A portable mini-stereo fell off a cabinet, also in our kitchen, and the kitchen trash can fell over. That was all. An hour or so afterwards, I found a plastic tube of Mary Kay face cleanser floating in our toilet bowl, but my wife says that is my fault.

So, kids, what have we learned from all this?