Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On

This morning at around 4:30 AM, I had my first experience with an earthquake. Yes, an earthquake. I was barely dozing when the house started shaking something fierce. My first thought, believe it or not, was "earthquake!" St.Louis does sit upon a pretty good fault line (the New Madrid fault), so even though it hadn't happened before, I have always been aware that it could happen someday. Anyway, it woke me up and I bolted upright and tried to catch my bearings. As the house shook, I thought perhaps it was a tornado. But I quickly realized that I couldn't hear any wind. I woke up Barb and said, "Honey, I think we just had an earthquake." She was very groggy and probably thought I was nuts. But then the inevitable aftershock came and it shook the house even worse than the initial quake. We just sat there in bed, unbelieving. After it stopped, I went and checked on the kids; they were fine, all fast asleep and blissfully unaware that something out of the ordinary had happened. My next worry was that it had done damage to the house, perhaps busting a water pipe and making a real mess. I didn't see anything out of the ordinary, so that was great news. Of course, if it did damage to the foundation I wouldn't know, since the basement is finished and the walls are covered with drywall. We'll just keep our fingers crossed and hope that we don't experience another earthquake for a good long while.