California Still Knows How to Rock and Roll

As probably most of you have heard by now, California had a 5.4 earthquake (5.8 depending on where you get your news) today. It was about 15 miles from my home in Anaheim (the Earthquake was centered in Chino Hills), which meant my place got taken for a bit of a ride. But all is now well--except for lunch, which I was not able to finish before the quake hit :-(

While Earthquakes are nothing new to me (one of my earliest childhood memories was waking up to the Whittier quake of 1987), this one was particularly fun because A.) it was the first one I got to feel with my wife, and B.) It was the first one I got to feel in a tall building. Our apartment was built in the 1920's, and is one of the tallest buildings in Anaheim; from out floor it felt like a drop and then a swinging sensation.

While the quake wasn't as bad as the '94 one (that was 6.7), it was enough to do a bit of structural damage to our place. The wall on the third floor stairwell is partially gone, and there is a hairline crack from about the fifth floor down. We also could not make or receive phone calls for about a hour.

Just to give you an idea of how stupid Californian's are, about ten minutes after the quake (while aftershocks were still happening), someone got in the elevator to get to their second floor apartment--people are so lazy here that they would rather get stuck in an elevator during an aftershock then walk one flight of stairs!

While our apartment was being inspected, we did what any other sane couple would do: we went to Costco!