Shakin' Things Up!

When I think of Virginia, I don't usually think "natural disasters," but that's what's been on everybody's mind here for the past week. It all started last Tuesday with the earthquake. While telling a friend about it on Facebook chat, she asked that I "use my humanities skills to paint a word picture" of the events. This is what I came up with on the fly:

It began as a low rumble, as if an overweight man was running down the hallway, or perhaps the beginnings of a new construction project in the building. However, all such possibilities were dispelled when the building began dramatically shifting forward and back. Co-workers looked at each other in disbelief--this was Virginia and earthquakes just don't happen here. After a moment of mental recovery, everyone quickly descended the stairs and congregated on street corners. All the while we were unable to send or receive text messages to loved ones.

Not bad for an impromptu narrative version, right? She liked it and I promised her I'd post it on my blog. There wasn't any major damage, but a few minor things happened. They found a crack in the top of the Washington Monument and some of the spires of the National Cathedral were damaged. Also, the tips of 4 of the spires on the Washington D.C. Temple broke and fell to the ground.

As soon as the shock from the earthquake began to wear off, the east coast began gearing up for the impending Hurricane Irene. It was blown so much out of proportion and catastrophic damage was predicted along the entire coastline, especially the Outer Banks of North Carolina and also New York City. While it did hit NC and some of the coastline fairly roughly, DC was pretty much unscathed. Saturday it rained all day and the night did get pretty windy, but nothing above 30-40 mph winds, if that. We were supposed to have stake conference this weekend, but because of the hurricane threat, all church meetings in our stake were cancelled! It was a bit weird to not have any church on Sunday, so I had the chance to study the scriptures for a couple hours, a la missionaire. It turned out to be a nice, albeit unusual Sunday.