Last week, an earthquake. This week, a hurricane.

What's next? Locusts? I REALLY don't like bugs, Lord, so can we stop at just two natural disasters and forget the plagues?

Although the actual hurricane, Irene, wasn't as bad as we had been prepared for, we got water in our basement. If Jack and I hadn't jumped on it first thing after breakfast, we'd be underwater now. It never got deep; it was just a constant stream of water, well, constant streamS of water coming up through the floor, in through the windows and walls. Our neighbor on the left has 6-8 inches of water in their finished basement. Our neighbor across the street has a completely renovated basement that was done a few years ago after the sewer backed up into her basement - so deep that her second refrigerator wad literally floating. She sent me a photo that year of Ole' Faithful gushing out of her basement toilet. And that happened again this morning. Not quite as bad as last time, but she was SUPPOSED to be on vacation in Virginia this week... Imagine if it was spouting lime that with no one there for a week...

It can always be worse; we just have to keep telling ourselves that...

5.9 Earthquake in Mineral, VA...

... and we were evacuated from our building!!!
I was in yoga class, in the middle of some stretching, and we felt the floor move.

It was more than the rumble of a truck passing in the street below.  This was, for lack of a better word, "different."

It felt shakey, like a truck, vibrating up and down, but it was also swaying back and forth.  You know how they say, "Once you feel it, you'll recognize it!"?  Well, that's true.  To a point.

We knew it was something more than a big truck.  But we never expected it to be an earthquake!

We finished another 3 or 4 minutes of yoga, and were just settling in under our blankets for a 15-20 minute nap (this is "Yoga Snooze" class, after all!), when the sirens went off and they evacuated the building!

I grabbed my flip flops and my clothes and my work I.D. and ran out of the building to my assigned spot.  The 4th floor meets on Pier A, on the right side, about midway.  My purse, keys, and phone, and all my money and credit cards, were at my desk.  I could get on the train, and get home, but I couldn't get into my car.  I could walk from the train station to my house but I couldn't get inside.

And besides that, it was H.O.T. outside today - I was wearing a t-shirt and some capri-length work out pants that were a heavy jersey.  It was so warm that an hour later, by the time they let us back into the building, I needed a shower!  (Keep in mind, after Yoga Snooze, I don't normally need to shower; it's not a class in which we really exert ourselves all that much!)

I haven't seen any news reports yet from the epicenter - I don't know how much damage was done there - but apparently this earthquake was felt as far south as South Carolina and as far north as Rhode Island and/or Massachusetts, depending on the news media you subscribe to...  I must say, though, if I felt it as strongly as I did, and it was nowhere near a 5.9 in Hoboken, NJ, then I can't imagine what "The Big One" must have felt like!!! 

And, quite frankly, I don't want to know...