Getting my Earthquake and Hurricane On!

This was a historic week for Virginia so I thought I should document it for posterity.

Tuesday ( August 23rd) I was at the Washington DC LDS Temple for a sealing of some good friends. I was sitting in the waiting area for them to call me back when the earthquake hit. It was just me and a temple worker guy in the room and he looked scared to death. I told him , " I am from California and we are having an earthquake....we need to get under a doorway or table" The chandeliers were swinging from left to right. We got under the doorway....he seemed relieved that I had been in one before. It was crazy. The temple had damage on the outside. They did do the sealing and we were on our way down 95. It was bumper to bumper because they had closed the bridges to check for damage. Clayton works at the Department of Homeland Security and they thought it was a bomb :) It urns out the epicenter was in Mineral ( 40 miles outside Richmond) and was 5.8 on the Richter scale. No damage at my house. But it sure shook everybody up. They felt it from Georgia to Toronto. We got off the interstate in Ocoquan for a lovely dinner on the water. When we got back on the traffic had subsided and we made it home with no problems. What a day!

Then a few days later ( Saturday, August 27) we had the hurricane. Luckily we had gone out for a big yummy mexican lunch before it got really bad. But we lost power and it was dark and boring in our house. So we jumped in the car, got a pizza from pizza hut and went to the Marriott where we had TV and internet. We came home to sleep then went back on Sunday morning. Church was cancelled. Not everyone in our ward was out. The Wyatt's invited us over to hang out and have a fabulous dinner. We drove around that afternoon to see all the tree damage. Our house was fine....luckily. We went back to the hotel again Sunday night...came home Monday morning and the power was back on . Hooray. I am doing laundry today for a friend who is still out. The biggest bummer was that my sleep study was cancelled after waiting 4 mos to get in. I was ready to go and get it over with...guess they will call to re-schedule when they get power back. Guess they can't check my brain waves out w/o power. Double bummer because last night in the hotel I had one of my famous spectacular dreams....sleeping deeper than I have in years. Greg brought breakfast back to the room and I could hardly come out of my dream to answer the door. I would have had some really awesome brain waves last night. I so wish I could record these dreams when I have them. They are so awesome I can't even describe them. Enough...this is supposed to be about the natural disasters not the natural family sleep disorders :)

Anyway...what a week. I think the Lord is trying to tell something to the East coast. Shape up...repent...be nice...whatever. I am listening and paying attention and am grateful we were ok and no big damage. Just a little inconvenience. I will post a picture to show what it all looks like all over Richmond. It isn't as bad as Hurricane Isabel....but still lots of damage. But you can always research it later. There wasn't much damage from the earthquake that was visible to the naked eye.

But we are fairly prepared for disasters...I have lots of chocolate and diet pepsi :)