Last Friday the earth surprised us by throwing a little temper tantrum. I was sitting at my desk when I felt a rumble, and thought we were getting a surprise thunderstorm, but I looked outside and the sky was clear and blue. The rumble kept going and the whole house was vibrating pretty dramatically. I’ve felt a few small East Coast style earthquakes before, but I have to say that last Friday’s was the biggest I’ve ever experienced.
Apparently the 4.8 quake was the biggest New Jersey’s had in 240 years. Folks reported feeling it all the way up in Maine. The epicenter was just on the other side of our county, so it was pretty powerful here. Ron described it as feeling like the floor was dropping out from beneath his feet, which I think is a pretty accurate description. Thankfully, we and the house survived without injury, though I’m glad we put off replacing our badly cracked front walk, which might have cracked just a little more with Friday’s adventure.
If we hadn’t had a big storm a couple of days before that knocked down a bunch of trees in our town, I suspect that we would have had some falling trees and power lines to contend with thanks to the earthquake, but fortunately mother nature had already gotten that out of her system.
It was weird that our big earthquake came right before another unusual natural phenomenon, the eclipse. We were not in the path of totality, as they say, here, but it’s just as well since mother nature was not so cooperative for the celestial phenomenon. The sky was pretty cloudy for the duration of the eclipse. This was the best photo I was able to get on my phone. I promise if you squint you can see a little bit of the eclipse:
With these strange events happening so close together, one gets a little nervous. Is this the end of the world? Is this some sort of dark omen? As it happens we are also in the midst of some other doings here, the roller coaster I alluded to last week, which I still can’t quite share with you. Could the earth rumbling and the sky going dark portend bad things?
Well, I’m happy to report that despite the strange geologic and celestial events, everything seems to be going quite well. Saturday, I had a wonderful get together with some lifelong friends. Here we are after a very filling and very delicious lunch:
Then on Monday we had some good news relating to that metaphorical roller coaster, which had us breathing a sigh of relief here. So, perhaps that earthquake and eclipse were actually good omens.
Hopefully these strange happenings proved to be good omens for you as well!
— Alissa
Weekly Inspiration
What I’m Reading: The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett
What I’m Watching: Killing It
What I’m Listening to: “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” - REM
Find out more about my books at alissagrosso.com
Find out more about my digital art at alissacarin.com
My apologies for the typos and such this post is almost certainly riddled with.
Here in Maine it was the PERFECT day for an eclipse - it wasn't "total," though. The sky didn't darken yet it appeared as if the sun were setting in the "South." The trees looked odd being lit in the dimming light from that direction rather than from the normal Westerly direction. I was "shocked" - pun intended - when I heard about the earthquake and the subsequent after-shock. Glad all is as it should be.
All’s well that ends well! Wishing you all the best!