The Apocalypse Had A Preview Show And I Missed It

As you may know or have experienced,  Baltimore/the upper half of the East Coast has had quite the encounter with the mother we call "Nature" recently.

Or have we?

Tuesday, August 23, 2011, approximately 1:50pm: Boyfriend and I leave my house to go to Patapsco State Park for a hiking outing.  We're sitting in the car at a red light.  I'm fiddling with something from my purse and briefly experience an odd but unimportant sensation, and look up to see a car whiz past us.  No big.  In the same moment he says "whoa" but doesn't elaborate on why.  We get a few minutes down the road and I check my phone to find four missed calls in the five minutes since I've left home.  I return the call, and my mother answers and proceeds to excitedly tell me that our house shook back and forth from an earthquake and things fell off the walls.  

"That explains why the car was shaking" he says.  "?!" is pretty much all I silently say.  What kind of a moron misses an earthquake?  Well, this one, apparently.  Then I was scared to go hiking, but we went anyway without further incident.

Fast forward to Saturday, August 27th,  after everyone has been emphatically predicting that Baltimore is going to be slammed with a Category 1 hurricane that weekend.  I'm very jaded when it comes to weather predictions but despite that, spent Friday evening good naturedly scouring four different stores looking for D batteries for flashlights

How did I spend the entire weekend?   Waiting out a huge rainstorm, basically.  I slept and watched way too much of the "Dick Van Dyke" show and prepared for school and Phi Theta Kappa activities.  My house had electricity almost the entire time, we lost phone and internet only briefly, and nothing flooded or blew away.

Yet several people I know were (or still are) without power for hours or days.  The chips fall where they may, I suppose.  Now I've spent two days waiting for school to start (because it was without power), and have almost completely lost what enthusiasm and energy I had mustered up for my first week back.  Also my sleep clock is incredibly screwed up, and my mind is always racing even when my body is tired.  Hence this badly-written, multi-tense post. 

So pardon me if one day you are sitting around reminiscing about the great natural disaster week of 2011 and the best I can give you is a blank stare.

Also, I hope you and yours are safe. <3