Shake, Rattle and Roll in Nebraska???

Wednesday evening another item was ticked off the proverbial bucket list. It wasn't anything I anticipated experiencing when I woke up that morning and didn't really know until the following morning that I had the experience.

I was snuggled up in the recliner with the clicker watching Criminal Minds and hubby was typing away on a vocabulary test for the technical reading class. There was a loud rumble - akin to a sonic boom and the house shook.

Don turned around and asked me what that was. We both thought something had exploded. I got up and looked out the windows and waited for the scanner to start going. However, nothing was visible amiss and the scanner was silent.

We discussed it for a bit - was it just a loud train or a very heavy semi rolling through town we questioned. We didn't think so but we had nary a clue as to what had caused the noise and the shaking.

Then early, and I mean early, the next morning, I was wide awake so I cranked up the old computer and started surfing. Due to a conversation my co-worker and I had, I remembered the Gazette has this handy dandy little tab located near the weather forecast tab in the lower right hand side of the home page and decided for the giggles to check it out. Could it have indeed been a earthquake? We live near the Humboldt fault as I had learned the previous day so I wondered if it had been a rumbler.

Indeed I had my first confirmation of the previous evenings occurrence. OMG - I hollered at hubby - hey - we had an 3.5 magnitude earthquake last night. He wasn't really thrilled to have me hollering at him that early in the morning. After awhile, 10/11 was reporting on their morning show indeed there had been an earthquake in the Johnson/Auburn area. OMG again. And I hollered at him again - see we did have an earthquake. Seriously, the boom and the shaking was indeed the earth quaking!!

Arriving at work, we compared earthquake experiences. Our experience, though memorable, was nothing like those living closer to the epicenter. My supervisor, who lives in Auburn, reported thinking there was a plane coming down and her house really shaking. She ran outside to see what was going on as did her neighbors. Another co-worker who lives closer to Johnson said it sounded like something was coming right up over and into her house. Another co-worker, who is from California originally, said while her family was upset at first wondering what the heck had happened she was pretty sure it was an earthquake. Others didn't feel a thing. One gal said she never felt or heard anything but she said her dog went 'nuts' around nine and now understands why.

Now the earthquake experience has been checked off the life list, I am thinking tornadoes, blizzards, hail storms, and flooding are enough 'nature' experiences for this kid to have seen in my life time. I am thinking I don't need to experience a hurricane or tsumani at any time in the future.