Thursday, June 15, 2006

Earthquake

I felt my first earthquake this morning! I woke up at about 5:30am, and sort of freaked out. This is a strange way to describe it, but it felt exactly like a cat jumping off the bed while you're sleeping. But then I heard the windows sort of rattle, and I started to wonder if someone was trying to break in, or if someone was in my apartment. Thankfully it was starting to get light, so I got up and looked around. Nothing was out of the ordinary except that I had forgotten to turn the air conditioner on before bed and it was getting too warm to sleep.

So I woke up this morning, and while I was having coffee and watching the news I saw on the Today Show that there was a 4.7 magnitude earthquake about 30 miles away from here. Wow, my first earthquake, and I mistook it for a cat.

5 comments:

donna said...

AAAHHHHHHHH! I totally forgot about it until I read your post- I felt it to, although I didn't totally wake up all the way, just sort of thought...is the bed moving? Is this an earthquake, are there kids running in the hall, or am I dreaming?

Chef Mayhem said...

Everything fell off my wall in my office. All my great limited edition prints and posters and autographs. It was quite the cacophony and Baggy was freaked out for about an hour. My coworker is here berating me for not using museum putty. Luckily only one glass broke in a frame and my Force-FX™ Jedi Lightsaber survived intact, so life goes on. I lived through both the Northridge quake (in LA, '94 on the 13th floor of a hotel, that was quite scary. The doorframe moved so we couldn't get out and they had to come crowbar us out of the room, eesh) and the Loma Prieta (here, '89)quake too. I hate earthquakes.

Bridget said...

I'm glad I could remind you, Donna. :)

And Chef, wow, that must have been a lot of noise going on this morning at your house. And I hardly dare ask, but what's a Force-FX Jedi Lightsaber? I mean, I know what a lightsaber is, but is this some sort of specialty lightsaber?

Chef Mayhem said...

The Force-FX™ Jedi Lightsaber by Master Replicas is only the finest licensed Star Wars laser sword available. Available in Sith Red, Jedi Blue, or (in my case) Sam Jackson violet, the glowing blade is formed by a series of bright LEDs in a diffuser tube, controlled by a semiconductor so that on power up/down, the LEDs actually run up and down the length of the blade, making the saber appear to grow from the hilt, much as the sabers appear to do in the films.

Furthermore, a speaker in the hilt plays sampled sound effects directly from Skywalker Sound, and there are a variety of idling hums and blade clash noises. A gyroscope in the hilt and sensors in the blade determine whether or not the blade is being swung through the air or strikes a surface, and the appropriate sounds are employed. All in all, it's a fine piece of craftsmanship for a toy.

Bridget said...

Wow, I'm glad I asked.