Last night (Saturday) Rob and I were sitting in bed talking when we noticed the bed was behaving oddly. My first thought was that Harlequin (Rob's incredibly large cat) was rubbing up against the bed, but it seemed the bed was moving a bit more than it would have if that was the case, especially as our box spring sits on the floor (so small children can climb onto the bed and so that small children don't fall as far when they inevitably fall off the bed). Then I noticed that the dresser and tv stand were shaking too. It lasted for maybe 30 seconds, at which point Rob and I looked at each other and wondered if it had been an earthquake.
We turned on the tv to a local news station, but they weren't saying anything about it. We checked internet news sites, but there was nothing there either. So we did what we should have done in the first place; we checked facebook. Who needs news stations when you have facebook? I don't even bother checking sports any more as I know I'll see who won in fb status updates well before any other site announces that information. Sure enough, several of my friends had posted that they felt it too, ruling out our alternative theories that perhaps a humongous plane had landed at the nearby airport or that for some reason someone decided to drive a very, very large truck slowly (and silently) down our street.
It turns out there was a 5.7 magnitude earthquake centered about 4-5 hours (by car) away from us and it was big enough that we felt it. Our kids were very disappointed that they slept through it. Apparently a lot of people slept through it. We slept through the second one that happened around 3am.
I have to say that of all the natural disaster issues I thought we might face in TX, earthquakes were not one of them. It was kind of cool though as it wasn't bad enough here to knock anything down or to hurt anyone. It was much worse in OK, where apparently they have had multiple earthquakes over the past few days. Our thoughts and prayers go out to those who lost homes and possessions because of this (I haven't heard of any deaths).
I was excited to get to add experiencing an earthquake to my list of natural disasters I've experienced. This list now includes: a volcano erupting (we lived in Seattle when Mount St Helen erupted), multiple hurricanes (including one whose eye passed directly over our house - so cool!), blizzards, major floods, wildfires, tornadoes, hail storms with lemon sized hail, ice storms, and now an earthquake! I suppose you could add drought and heat waves to that too.
