This Tuesday I sat in the chair at my desk. The building where I am contracting is on Wall Street across the street from the East River. It was 1:51 p.m. ET. The chandeliers started rocking back and forth so I stood up and started pacing back and forth from the copy room back to my desk and then back to the copy room asking aloud, "Did any body feel that?".
I went back to sit down. I was shaking a little bit and the building shook some more under me too. This was my very first earthquake. (I can cross that off my bucket-list)
I kept shaking my head and nodding thinking about how unfortunate it was that the judgement day evangelist that used to stand over by the NYSE talking loud and handing out pamphlets picked the wrong set of months for their campaign to jump off. It could have been a major victory for them if they would have waited.
A voice over the building PA system asked us to go down the emergency stairwell and after what seemed like an eternity we were all herded off to a spot under a bridge that supports the FDR.
I'm not sure we really know what to do in case of an earthquake on this coast. I'm certain standing under a bridge is not one of them. I found this from the red cross - but I'm not all the way sure that's the way either. Still, it's better than nothing.
Thank YOU Mayor Bloomberg
After standing under the bridge for a few minutes I asked my manager if I could head home and I flipped common sense to the wind and hauled ass heading for the subway over by Brooklyn Bridge. I'm certain that's not the way to go in an extreme scenario but again, I don't have the right training and in that moment all I could think about was getting home to my family. The subway was sort of empty but running on or close to schedule like nothing happened and for that I thank the Mayor of NYC.
Is Mercury in retrograde?
My phone has been acting funny lately. It calls random people, sends emails and drafts phantom text messages. I was thinking it could be one of the following things: 1. Mercury could be in retrograde 2. the Po-Po is the monkey on my back or 3. Get some prep H because the sun is flaring up again.
I'm fascinated by the solar flares.
I felt lucky my BlackBerry was working at that particular moment, so I called my kids. They didn't feel the earth shake.
