Sunday, January 29, 2006

Earthquake!


We had an earthquake last evening at about 6 PM (see epicenter--red square--on the above map; my home is near the lower right corner). I was sitting on the couch when it happened and the first thing I thought was that a train must have been going by-- I live really close to a main north-south line, and it's common for things to jiggle when a big train goes by.

But #1, there was no train, and #2, this felt different. The normal train-goes-by shaking is very brittle and staccato; this was more of a fluild rolling sensation. It only lasted for a few seconds. The weird thing was, I sat there puzzling it out, trying to figure out what was going on since there wasn't a train anywhere to be seen. I didn't even really consider that it could be a quake. It was only a 2.8, which is nothing, but I guess it was quite close to the surface and thus felt pretty big.

Other than that, it just keeps raining. You all know how much I like the rain--I'm one of its biggest fans. But even I'm getting a little, erm.... saturated by it. It's rained something like the last 39 out of 41 days, we're close to breaking an all-time record, and once again we have a flood warning posted, which I'm hoping won't involve my basement. Bill actually went out a couple of weeks ago with pick and shovel and dug a trench that goes all the way around the chimney end of the house, where water was coming in. Since then we've been okay, but cross fingers.

The Oregonian 'EDGE' recently ran a contest to come up with a new Orgeon motto. All tongue in cheek and unofficial, of course. My favorite?

"Oregon...You're Soaking in It."

(Tip of the hat to Madge, and for those who don't get this pop culture reference, you missed out.)

3 comments:

Arne said...

Hi!
Where i come from there normally no earthquakes. Luedenscheid, my hometown, is 1 hour drive away from Collogne.
For my work I have to move to Duesseldorf. This has half a million people.
Do you speak German?

Cheers

miyamoto shimoda said...

And i do appreciate it so much you dropped by my photolog and such. And Singapore do have rainy season and such. We call it the monsoon season where flash floods are common. Well, Singapore is situated just right outside the Pacific platonic plate so we do get those jitters whenever Indonesia experiences an earthquake.

FishTaxi said...

Thats a lot of days of rain.

How about "Oregonians are rust."

I like those little shakers once in a while. Keeps us in orbit.