It hit at 11:42 am today. We were all in a meeting room, just finishing up our weekly staff meeting and starting to eat at a lunch party for one of our staff members who was leaving. When it hit everyone just stopped talking, stopped eating, stopped everything. It started with a bit of a rolling movement and then a huge loud booming noise and then the building just shook. The noise was louder than I ever remember hearing during past earthquakes.

We all headed outside and stood around for about 15 min. and then went back in to finish lunch. I had a lot of trouble eating after that. It took a good hour for my body to stop shaking. We went ahead with the meeting even though most of us were having great difficulty concentrating. Meanwhile I knew that Patrick was trying to reach me and would be unable to do so. And he was. And he couldn’t.

I called him as soon as the meeting ended. Since All Saints is an old building (built in the 1920’s) he figured we had been evacuated due to damage. Fortunately that was not the case. Just a meeting that dragged on for way too long…

I’m sure that Murphy and the cats were panicked during the shaking, but all seems well tonight. Loki and Baby are still in hiding. No doubt they’ll eventually come out. And my house is okay with no damage. The doors to the china closet were open, but nothing fell out. And none of my glassware seems to have moved.

So, as they keep saying on tv, we bit the bullet this time. It’s been so long since we had a big shaker that I had almost forgotten about earthquakes. After today, I’m really not looking forward to the next one.