EARTHQUAKE!!!

April 4, 2004 8:17 am (Shimodate)
April 3, 2004 6:17 pm (Ottawa)

I'm grinning ear-to-ear at the moment because about 10 minutes ago I experienced my first earthquake.

It was pretty minor all said, but definately interesting. At first I wasn't sure what was going on, it just felt like a big truck driving by or something. Gradually it got stronger, and you could almost feel the ground undulating (neat trick when you live on the second floor like me).

The whole thing lasted about 1 minute, but it left quite the impression on me. I want another one! The lights were swinging aroud as they hang from the ceiling, and the earth was audibly rumbling.

All my life I've said I wanted to see what it was like to experience a natural disaster. This doesn't cut it. It was more like feeling turbulence on an airplane.

When I was a child I was in a car driving down the highway with my family in the middle of winter. I must have been about 3 or 4 at most. My father hit a patch of black ice and our car went spinning nearly off the road. My mother was terrified, my father probably was too (though of course what guy would admit that). My baby sister was crying, and do you know what I did?

I said, "That was fun, can we do it again?"

My mother retells me that story all the time, and it reminds me of this little earthquake.

Maybe we never really change from birth to adulthood, we just learn to control our impulses better. In any case "That was fun, can we do it again?"