This morning, I sat at my desk earlier than usual to start my blog. As my fingers were poised lightly on the key board, I began to feel dizzy, then the lamp shade began to tremble, and I felt a familiar rolling motion underfoot.
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Yup! We had an earthquake on this sunny, breezy Monday in the central coast of California.
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According to the local television news station, it was a 4.3 on the Richter scale and lasted 10 seconds. It wasn't a "there's-a-big-hand-pushing-my-building" type of quake; it was more like a "there's-a-wave-passing-under-my-building" type--the kind that is almost enjoyable to ride if you weren't so aware of the harm that it could cause. I did not even have time to get up and stand in the doorway--the best place to be while experiencing a temblor--before it stopped.
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The news began to report about 15 minutes after the quake and claimed no fires, no downed telephone wires, no canned food crashing off supermarket shelves, no harm, no foul.
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Oh, yeah? Tell that to my computer and internet connection! When I returned to my desk, my computer was frozen. I rebooted but could not get back onto the internet to write the blog piece.
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Now, I'm miffed.
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How dare Mother Earth choose this moment to rearrange herself and let off a little pressure, right as I am ready to write? Doesn't she know I'm on a deadline?
Honestly, I had to chuckle at myself as I heard my inner voice say: "Here's a place you can choose your response rather than just react." So, I recited the Serenity Prayer:
God: Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
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Rather than rant and rave about the inconvenience, I thanked Mother Earth for the small quake (now we are less likely to have a big one), and I went about rescheduling my day.
Instead of writing and conducting research, which was the orginal plan; I cleaned off my desk, filed a bunch of papers, and called a number of friends back east--most of whom tried to convince me that it was time to move out of California and back to New Jersey.
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I snickered at that suggestion for earlier this year the New Jersey county in which my family and sweetheart live had four small quakes. The residents were shocked. Some reported thinking there had been an explosion nearby; some thought a bomb had been dropped on their neighborhood, while others thought it was the end of the world. The Jersey quakes, ranging between between 2. and 3.5, were pretty light-weight, as quakes go..
I just talked to my neighbors, Maggie and Lou, and they didn't even feel our 4.3 tremblor. Business and usual for them.
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As for my computer, when I turned it on this evening, a message appeared on the screen saying that the date mechanism had been incorrectly reset and I needed to rectify it in order to get back on the internet.
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The reset date? December 30, 1969, 20-odd years before there was such thing as an internet. Apparently, not only did I feel the earthquake this morning, I also spent most of the day in a time warp!
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