5.6 earthquake yesterday

Many of my readers (ok, my friends who continue to read my blog) do not live in California. I am a relatively new Californian - I just moved here in early 2001. So, I've only actually felt two earthquakes. Sometimes I'm traveling, often times too far from the epicenter to really feel it. Both were, obviously, minor. But, I got a concerned text message from a dear friend about last night's 5.6 earthquake and decided to try to describe it.

Luckily, I was at G$'s apartment. We were standing there, talking and then all of a sudden the bookshelf seemed to move away from the wall a little. Everything kind of shook. It was as if you were standing really close to a slow jackhammer. And then, what seemed like 5 seconds later, it was over. We then jumped up and down "Yay! Earthquake!" Big hugs, and that was it.

Of course, these mini-earthquakes are still novelties to us native Midwesterners. However, I am scared of the next big earthquake. There are some theories that say that these mini-quakes would lessen a potential big one, but some other experts say that these minis are also just leading up to an intense earthquake.

USGS Earthquake Map