My First Crescent City Earthquake!

Hey! I felt an earthquake today! I was sitting on the edge of the bed and it very noticeably swayed from side to side for several seconds. Michael happened to call about ten or fifteen minutes later and I assumed it was to ask if I'd felt it. He said that someone else had just asked him that. Apparently, he didn't feel it. But I just looked it up on USGS and sure enough, there was a magnitude 6.0 earthquake centered not that far from the earthquake that we missed when we were in Portland.

This is the way I want to experience any future earthquakes here: just barely. I want no destruction of property or life. It just so happens that we finally shopped for our earthquake kits over the weekend and Darcy thinks it's the best thing ever. She piles the jars of peanut butter into towers. For the first day, when they everything was piled at one end of the kitchen table, she'd climb up on the chair and sort of hug it all and ask, "What's this for?". She'd giggle like mad when we said it was our earthquake supplies. She has proclaimed, "I love earthquakes!" I think it's the boxes of chocolate-covered peanut butter granola bars (an big earthquake or tsunami is the perfect time for such a calorie-packed snack) that have won her love, not really the earthquakes.

For the record, each kit (one large one for the house and smaller ones for each car; we're supposed to have enough for three days without power or assistance) so far contains:

large jar of peanut butter
large box of saltines
granola bars
juice boxes
flashlight
fire starter
hand sanitizer
2.5 gallons of water

We're going to add tetrapaks of milk and probably some dried and/or canned fruit. Oh! And I'm going to get a pound-plus bar for each kit from Trader Joe's while I'm in Albuquerque. If chocolate can fix a close encounter with a dementor, it's got to help with the shock of living through a big earthquake. This won't feed us well, but it will feed us enough to get through. If we're home, obviously, we have all the food that's in the house as well and at least one of the car kits in addition to the house kit.

And, of course, speaking of earthquakes, if you haven't already made a donation to help the Haitian people recover and rebuild from their devastating earthquake, please consider donating to Partners in Health now.