Quakes

Okay, just felt a sharp shake...looks like this one was a 3.7, 7 miles east of Milpitas.

I felt the one last night, too, while standing at my bench at woodshop, idly leaning on my stack of redwood. At first I thought it was just my balance doing something funky, like when your heartbeat makes yourself move just a little back and forth? So I stood up to see if it was just me, and everything seemed fine, so I shrugged it off. Until a few minutes later I wandered over to a group of students plus teacher who were talking, and the teacher said "Anyone else feel the earthquake?" Ha! One of the students used his cellphone to check the news, and reported that it had been a 5.6, east of San Jose.

When I got home, quite a few things had fallen over, including some tall pewter cups that fell off our sideboard, making a nice couple of dents in the wood on the way down, and some plates and a mug that had tipped over inside the sideboard...and were leaning against the inside of the sideboard doors, pushing it out a bit. The only thing keeping the mug from plummeting was the springiness of the hinge (eep!). I carefully rescued it.

I also did a *patsselfonback* for having actually used the "quake hold" putty I got for free from OSH about a year ago; it's probably the only reason three of our more fragile items on shelves in our family room didn't fall off and shatter. Time to get some more putty, methinks...if they're not already sold out. :-}

But really, Mother Nature, thanks, we get it. We're awake. And all the tourists have a nice Californian memory to take home with them. You can stop now.