All Shook Up

I was standing in the kitchen at work yesterday getting a glass of cold water when the kitchen began to rock and roll! Being a native of California I knew exactly what was happening and stepped into the nearest doorway to ride out the 5.4 earthquake that was shaking us up. It lasted about 20 seconds, but when your world is rocking 20 seconds seems like a long, long time, like it's never going to stop. I heard traffic signal equipment falling to the concrete in the warehouse. But it did stop and I began to hear hesitant voices calling each other's names and asking "Are you allright?"

After we had all assured ourselves that we were fine we hit the phones trying to locate our loved ones. This is standard procedure after an earthquake of this size so of course the phone lines were jammed for awhile and we couldn't locate anybody. Eventually, however, we were all able to get ahold of our loved ones and check for damage.

Then the stories began to roll in of where everyone was and what they were doing and how they felt when it happened. The phenomenons of weird experiences; seeing light poles swaying, driving with what feels like a flat tire, and the weirdest one I heard of a fluorescent tube shattering in a truck for no reason just a few minutes before the quake hit. The adrenaline rush lasted a few hours until we all decided we must get back to work. There is a lesson in this experience somewhere, I'm sure....something about not getting so caught up in ourselves that we forget to appreciate each other until something like this happens...or maybe just a reminder of how small a part we play in this huge universe. But whatever the lesson, I think we are all more appreciative of the little things we take for granted today. We're all a little more aware of how much we appreciate each other, and how much our loved ones mean to us.

After each "epi"sode we all eventually breathe easy again and laugh about the strange things that take place during earthquakes. An employee of our Texas office happened to be visiting yesterday who had never been in an earthquake and we laughingly said "Welcome to California!" as he described his experience (He was at lunch with the managers when it hit and they all took off running and left him sitting at the table, not realizing that he would not know what to do). Earthquakes are part of our lives and every so often they have to remind us that they are still there by shaking us all up.