natural disasters

It’s 1:15am on a Tuesday night/Weds morning. What are YOU doing? I can’t sleep. I was worrying a bit about the structural soundness of my old apartment building post-earthquake, and someone from California (read: experience with this type of thing) said that the building is likely fine since the quake was only a moderate level. 5.8 seems more than moderate to me, but I’m no expert on these matters. Then again, I happened to go to a site that said the intensity was a 4.2 here in the U Street area of DC, 4.0 in Bethesda (where I was at the time), but then a 3.6 in Hartford, CT and 3.2 in Boston. How is that possible? Not sure if that’s legit or not, but anyway, we certainly felt it here. But that’s not the point. Around midnight I thought to myself that perhaps I should check my apartment for any cracks. Of course, without fail, I found a crack. A fairly large one at that; on this bannister contraption that basically holds the whole building together. This is an old building too, built in the early 1900’s, brick…not exactly structurally sound. So perhaps I’m overreacting since I can’t sleep at the moment because of this (in fact, I won’t even go up to the attic to bed – that’s higher than I’d like to be and too close to the roof). I emailed the condo guy here to ask if anyone had checked the structural soundness and keep checking my email to see if he responds. Because obviously he’s going to respond to me at 2am after I sent the email at 12:30.

DC is also bracing for a potential hurricane to hit the region. Hopefully it won’t be bad here, but I’m just a tad bit upset that God does not want me to ever go to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. Friends, I have been trying to make that trip happen for YEARS now. To no avail. Finally I get an invite to an amazing house for a long weekend, and what happens? Hurricane Irene. Currently she’s slated to hit land as a Category 3 or more at none other than…you guessed it! Outer Banks, North Carolina. So the trip that we were supposed to leave on tomorrow is not looking likely. For once, I advance packed for this trip too. People wonder why I do everything last minute. That is why. A damn hurricane or earthquake could hit at any moment, vastly altering your weekend plans, rendering the time spent planning and packing useless.

Not sure about you, but between the DC blizzard of 2010, the blizzards up north last winter, the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, a 5.8 quake on the east coast, hurricanes, tornados, and Lord knows what else…Mother Nature is not exactly making me feel safe.

Now…back to worrying about the next aftershock. Or I could try to sleep like a normal human being.

Stay safe DC,
Sara