Put your head between your knees...

...and kiss your ass goodbye! The end is here!

Ok, it’s not that bad, but we just had an earthquake today. Whoo hoo! What a ride!

I get up at 5:15am during the week, so I had been up and around for about 25 minutes when the house shifted. It felt like I was back on the cruise ship again. It shifted enough to wake up the cat but not the Spouse. Gilligan and I looked at each other with wide eyes as the house continued to vibrate.

His attention was then drawn to a noise coming from the living room down the hall. I went there and heard metal clanging. I turned on the light to see a few of our swords waving back and forth and clanging against the wall. I knew what was happening. I was just chanting to myself, “Please don’t fall. Please don’t fall.” I could just see a few of these things putting on a hell of a show as the teetered off the wall and punctured furniture and electronics.

The whole thing lasted about 30 to 45 seconds. As soon as the house and swords stopped moving I ran back to the bedroom, grabbed the Spouse’s foot and said, “Guess what dear, you just slept thru an earthquake!”

That man can sleep thru anything.

This wasn’t my first earthquake, tho. It’s actually my third.

My first was in July of 1982. That was the first time in my life I seriously thought the world was coming to an end. The night before we had some downright devastating thunderstorms rip thru our area. Not only did it dump torrential rains and stir up a few tornadoes, but we got hailstones the size of golf balls which did a number on my dad’s cars and our roof. The cars looked like a bad case of acne and the roof and ceiling caved in on the dog. Fret not, the dog was ok (a little wet and sooty, tho) but the hallway was a mess of water, wet plaster and black crud from the roof. Needless to say, we grabbed the wet, dirty dog and spent most of the night in the basement.

So the next day, as we’re recuperating from the previous night’s onslaught, I feel a rumble. I was sitting in my room and felt the floor moving under my butt. I totally freaked out when an already unstable bookcase behind me started swaying back and forth (please note, I’m barely 12 years old). I ran to my parents room and the three of us sat there and waited it out. It only lasted about 1 minute but it was an eternity to an already scared and exhausted kid. The now dry dog was ready to have a stroke.

We had another one back in the spring of 2002. I had gone home from work sick that day and was crashed on my couch in the world’s smallest 1-bedroom apartment in Hikes Point. I was woken up by the building shaking and the swords (once again, the swords that have been with me for a long time and keep moving from home to home) clanging directly over my unhealthy body on the couch. All I could think in my painkiller-induced stupor was, “I hope whatever motherfucker is moving the couch up the building’s steps hurries the fuck up!!”

It was an hour later (after the painkillers did their job) that I happened to check the local news and discover it wasn’t some fat bastard moving furniture.

So the experts and doomsayers have been predicting a queen-mother earthquake for us for decades now. Altho this one wasn’t nearly the disaster it could have been, it was enough to shake the facade off one building downtown.

When the big one does hit, Kentucky is just gonna drop about 150-200 feet straight down, since we sit on a huge network of caves and limestone. I only hope it happens after I’m dead and cremated.