Earthquake My Heart

So. Last night there was an earthquake here.

No, I'm not kidding.

For those of you who live in the midwest along with me, this is probably not news to you at this point. There was a 5.6 earthquake with its epicenter outside Oklahoma City last night shortly before 11PM. There was another one before that on Friday, a four-point-something, late Friday night. That one I did not feel, despite the fact that when it happened (at like, 2AM) I was awake cooking a big pot of soup and frying cheeseburgers.

Last night? Oh yes, I felt it. It was big enough to be felt all over the tri-state area. I'm about 180-190 miles north of Oklahoma City, but my friend Gwen felt it in St. Louis, and other friends felt it in northwestern Missouri.

So here's my story.

I had just finished reading Kenzaburo Oe's novel Teach Us To Outgrow Our Madness for my Middle Eastern/Asian lit course, and had also just finished watching college football for the evening (as, at 10:30 or so, it had just wrapped up). I sat down at my desk to check my email/Facebook/Twitter as I'd been on the couch in the living room for the past five hours or so at that point, and Sadie was sitting at my feet.

I'd just gotten a cup of coffee when I felt my chair shaking. I thought it was Sadie trying to climb up onto my chair, as she is wont to do, and that always makes it shake and/or move, but I looked down at her and she was staring up at me wide-eyed and scared, her ears slicked back and flat. I noticed the lighter items on my desk were shaking, as well. As this sometimes happens when I put too much weight on my desk while typing, or when a long, loud train is barreling down the tracks less than a mile from my house, I slowly lifted my hands from my desk and sat very still. Nope, it wasn't me. And it wasn't a train. The house was shaking. As I described to my brother Aaron, the closest approximation I can make as to how it felt was as if I were sitting in a boat on water, and someone was rocking it just enough to make everything sway back and forth a little. Absolutely noticeable, but not violent or trembly. Just rocking.

The earthquake lasted a good, solid minute or so, knocking over a few small boxes on my desk (and a few lighter things on shelves in the house's cupboards) before it slowly thinned out and everything stopped moving. I barely had thirty seconds after it stopped to think to myself okay, seriously, that was an earthquake, right? before my Facebook and Twitter feeds were FILLED with everyone out here reporting they'd felt it -- including Gwen, in St. Louis. I knew when she said she'd felt it that it must have been a big one.

It was; 5.6 is the biggest quake on Oklahoma record, and fucking huge for this area period. I live in Kansas. Tornadoes I'm used to; there's a game plan for those. Earthquakes, however? Those are new.

Although I suppose I can mark another thing off my bucket list, if only half-assedly. I've always wanted to experience a real earthquake. Now I have, even if it was a small one. To a certain extent, all of it was somewhat exciting. Before last night, I figured I would've had to go to California for that. Hah, silly me.

Of course, the news media out here went nuts over it as well; KSN 3 in Wichita had live news coverage of the quake's impact on our area until well after 12:30, with the usual fearmongering of "So there was a 4.x quake last night, and tonight there's a 5.6 in almost the exact same spot...does that mean there's going to be a larger one next? Who can tell? It's possible, right?" And I'm left rolling my eyes, because it's fucking Oklahoma, not California, Japan, Alaska, etc.

There was some minor damage reported here in Kansas in varied areas; one of the dorms at a local community college suffered some damage, etc. No injuries, though. At least not here. I swear, a little shaking and everyone thinks it's the end of the world.

After I went to bed (around 3AM), there were apparently some aftershocks, but I doubt any of them were strong enough to be felt up here. Regardless, even if they could have been felt, I slept through all of them like a rock. I got up shortly after 11, and began my work/football watching for the day. I'm currently more than halfway through reading Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key, and it's been hard to put down all day. It's a fantastic crime/detective novel. For those of you unfamiliar with Hammett's work, he created Sam Spade, wrote The Maltese Falcon, etc. I have to read the novel for my Grad Studies in Fiction class, a course that I am getting increasingly frustrated with (but I'll more than likely cover that in a post all its own at the end of the semester).

Anyway, once I finish reading that tonight, and write a short response paper on it, I'll be unofficially done with my homework for the weekend. I say "unofficially" done because I do have two presentations coming up in my lit courses -- one with Suri, and one solo -- and I'll have to do a few hours' of work on each. Nothing major, though. If I have the time and inspiration, I'll need to start working on them. I've already started my preliminary research.

Other than that? Nothing else going on, really.