The Thing About Earthquakes

... is that they just start happening. Maybe someone in some meteorological lab somewhere has some little bit of a warning, but for us commonfolk, not so much.

My desk is right near the Pres' office and he called over to me, "Colleen-san, here is an earthquake!" The minute he said it, we all felt it. The building seemed to roll back and forth. There are some chrome wire shelves that were rattling and swaying, but nothing fell. It was sort of like being on one of the old Redbird subway cars in Manhattan.

As you know from earlier mental breakdowns, I'm not so good in the earthquakes, but it helped that I was in the office with lots of people. They all seemed relatively unfazed. Except the Pres, that is. He looked a little pale. At one point he said to me, "This is really big one, ne?" Afterward, I asked him what we're supposed to do in the case of an earthquake because, obviously, we all just sat there and looked at each other. He said, "Hm. Maybe we should make a plan for such a thing. It's difficult to decide what to do." Um. Yes. Good idea.

All in all, Tokyo got the least of it. The epicenter was about 200 miles north of Tokyo; there were injuries and some damage. The worst was the roof of a health club collapsed on top of an indoor pool. Scary.

The excitement never stops.