As a native Californian, it was important Evan get his first earthquake under his belt as soon as possible. Luckily providence provided for him tonight. Steph and I had just finished putting him to bed and were finally about to sit down for dinner when a series of large trucks ran into the house. Or at least that's kinda what it felt like. It turns out we'd been hit by a
magnitude 5.6 earthquake, with an epicenter only 4½ miles away.
When the house started shaking, our first reaction was, "Huh, I wonder how long this is going to last," followed almost immediately thereafter by "Baby!" Evan was just fine, although he was a little startled by all the bright lights, noise, and parents grabbing him when he was supposed to be sleeping:
I can't speak to whether he thought the house moving around him was anything out of the ordinary. When almost all the motion you experience is your world acting upon you, who's to say that your house pushing you around is any different than a parent doing the same?
I can, however, speak to this mirror's opinion on the issue. I'm quite confident it would have preferred to have been moved by Steph or I instead of the house:
We were trying to figure out how to throw this mirror away, which is why it was resting against the wall in the soon-to-be-completed wine bar area of the kitchen instead of mounted somewhere. Past experience tells us that these thick glass mirrors are a royal pain in the butt to break into smaller pieces for disposal (we fractured a hammer trying to shatter one at our old condo). It turns out an earthquake does the job just fine, though. The next time I need to break up an old mirror I'm going to lean it just slightly against a wall and wait. Maybe I'll wrap it in a sheet or something first.
Fortunately that was the extent of the damage. Between chitchatting with the neighbors about the temblor, putting Evan to bed again, and cleaning up the mirror bits our dinner was delayed by an hour or so. You only get to experience this kind of geological excitement once every decade or two, though.
Because the neighborhood kids didn't start trick-or-treating until right around his bed time Evan didn't get to go around and collect candy this year, which is probably for the best -- Steph and I really don't need an excuse or opportunity to eat more candy. He did get to help greet people for a little bit, though, and he was ready to get out there if needed:
Of course Evan eventually had to get out of his costume so he could get ready for bed:
Steph wanted to make sure I mentioned this was a picture of Evan's "bear bottom" (I didn't think it was that funny, but she was quite tickled by the homophone).
