On August 23rd, a few minutes before 2 pm, I start to feel the house shaking. I'm thinking: Earthquake? No, Maryland doesn't have earthquakes. Can the house be collapsing on its own? No, the house is pretty sturdy. I look out the window and try to see whether the other houses are shaking too. I can't tell. I wander around for a second wondering what I should do, walk over to Crystals room and watch her sleep for the duration of the quake which ended up lasting a few minutes. Afterwards, I get online to check if there was an earthquake forecast for today to learn that earthquakes are generally not forecast. I turn on the TV and see the news confirming the earthquake. After about a half hour, I get a call from Steve and a call from his mother to check on things. We didn't get any damage and nothing even fell down, but there were many other buildings that did sustain damage, including public buildings like the Washington Monument, many schools (some having to close for several days), and the temple's spire got damaged too.
I think it was two winters ago, during Snowmageddon/Snowpocalypse, when we lost power at our apartment in Greenbelt for 24 hours or so, a tree crashed into the window of the apartment next to ours, and we spent the night with our family members, who did have power, in College Park. One of their neighbors was sadly killed in her car by a falling tree.
This summer, Hurricane Irene appeared to take the power away from even more people and for even longer for some. Church was cancelled even before the storm started. Steve wouldn't allow us to open the fridge even for a moment. We cooked items from our food storage on a propane camping stove on our porch. But without the fresh/frozen vegetables, I still felt like I was so starving, so we wound up eating at a Golden Corral. That made me very happy.
See the leaf debris?
And the new pond at our Assateague camp site.
