when
bellise left this morning, i heard her slam the door. it woke me up a little, so i remember. i think i heard her come back, and was in the process of
drifting back off to sleep when she was
slamming the door again. and she wouldn't stop!
the whole damned house was shaking!
then i realized what was happening and that, though bellise
is from
california, it wasn't really her
fault. (get it? fault?) i jumped out of bed and got into my doorway, watched
sakimaro come out of her room, watched my computer shake around and hoped first for an avoidance of a
system failure, second for an avoidance of fire. i don't think it lasted more than
thirty seconds. but it was scary, and awesome. the house shook like it was on the
greyhound going over the
bad spots on i-5.
it stopped, and we all came into the living room. no one was
too panicked, since we're all from places in the world where
earthquakes are known to occur. we'd had our
earthquake preparedness training in grade school, crawling under our desks when a certain bell sounded.
i think about
my old grade school, how tiles would fall from the gym ceiling at random. for the first time, i'm glad they tore it down. i think about
tacoma, and worry, because of all the old, tall buildings.
we can hear the sirens, outside.
me and sakimaro go out to the car to listen to the radio (
the power is out). it can't have been too serious, because they're playing music on most of the stations. as i flip through channels, we don't hear any
emergency bulletins. we find news, and hear that it was a
6.5, the
epicenter somewhere between
yelm and tacoma. there are cracks in the streets of downtown
olympia, and power and cell phones, as well as
traffic signals, are out.
things settle down. bellise tries to call california, but, while the phones are still working, they're too busy for her to get through. she blames
corporate america. my dad is able to call me from
mount vernon, and he's ok. they even have power. i take a shower, eat some bread, and a little while later,
the power is back on. we get through to school and find out that
evergreen is closed for the day. bellise and sakimaro sit down to watch a movie, and i start up my baby, which - aside from the annoyance of
scandisk - runs just fine.
sparky comes over and tells us about his experience, and that the epicenter was, specifically, 11 miles northeast of us and 30 miles down.
schmoe calls and tells me about our (very distinguished)
formal languages teacher running up the stairs of the lecture hall as shit fell off the ceiling.
i sit down to write this,
before i forget.