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YOU HEARD IT HERE first! Or rather, I heard it here...as in right here where I live...right now.
A sound of nature I've never heard before in my whole entire life! How often can a person make that assertion?

All was quiet and here I sat at the computer, thinking about the fact that I should not be sitting at the computer, I should be sleeping. The minutes were ticking past midnight and there was no place I should be but dreamland. And then without warning there came a boom that rattled the windows and shook the floors. It wasn't an ordinary boom, as in thunder or as in something exploding nearby. No...this boom was monstrous! And it rumbled and rattled on and on, which pretty much ruled out a plane crashing from the sky... just one of the ideas that scampered through my head. Yes, amazing how fast one's brain can catalog possibilities in the course of about twenty seconds.

Quietness returned and I heard not a single siren... a distinctly good sign.

So I sat and contemplated what I'd just experienced and there seemed to be only one explanation for this monumental noise...the earth must have shrugged!

Checking the local TV station, Jay Leno was airing as usual...no interruptions of the late-breaking kind. It was only just now, nearly an hour later, that the trailer appeared at the bottom of the TV screen to give me the late-shaking 3.3 verification: Indeed, I survived my first earthquake!

It was exciting, awe-inspiring and fascinating...what a shame had I been sleeping!

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