What the ... ?

Yes, today was a much better day than yesterday.  And that includes the fact there was an earthquake today.

I don't want to be one of those annoying "power of positive thinking" people, but I did realize last night that I needed an attitude adjustment with respect to the annoying stuff at work.  I mean, bottom line, I really do love my job -- and I'm not doing anyone (least of all me) any favors by being pissed off about one particular assignment going off the rails.  In fact, I actually love this assignment -- I'll love it more when it's done, sure -- but I really just needed to approach this with rather more of a sense of humor than a sense of frustration.  I tried that this morning.  (I even mentioned it to my boss and asked, "How am I doing so far?" which made him laugh.)  Worked wonders.

And then the earth moved.  We're on the fourth floor so the building was rocking quite a bit.  Substantial shaking, but other than it toppling a single book on my desk, there was no damage.

(And, honestly -- my first thought was not "dive under my desk" or even "look after the student who happens to be in my office."  It was "hit 'save,' so that if we lose power, I don't lose the draft I'm working on.")

About ten minutes later, Building Security came over the loudspeaker to unnecessarily give us the "all clear," thank us for evacuating, and tell us it was safe to return to the building.  At which point, we all looked up and said, "we were supposed to evacuate?"

And, that was pretty much where the story ends. 

Until I got home.

Now, I don't want to sound like there was all this destruction in my condo or anything, because there wasn't.  But there was substantially more than I'd ever personally experienced in an earthquake.  (The Northridge quake knocked one vase off a shelf, and ... somewhat oddly ... knocked a valance out of my wall.)  Obviously, it all depends on your closeness to the quake.  Even more obviously, my home is apparently closer to today's quake than my office is.

Walked in and saw that a few realtor business cards had toppled from the stack on the table in my hallway.  I laughed at this.  Oooo -- knocked over business cards -- scary earthquake.  Continued into the living room.  Four chess pieces had fallen off the board -- two made it off the coffee table entirely.  A vase of fake flowers had fallen off the top of the piano (and delicately balanced itself on the keys).  I put these things back.  (I hugged my cat.)  All the books remained on the bookshelf, but the stacks were all leaning to the side.  I re-leaned them.

Came into my home office.  I have a lot of snowglobes -- they were all unmolested.  I also have a Lord of the Rings not-quite-snowglobe.  It has three parts to it:  a wooden stand; a metal (I guess?) base with three ringwraiths modelled on it; and a clear acrylic sphere sitting on the top, with the Ring in the center.  It's on a high shelf in the hutch above my file cabinets.

The acrylic sphere holding the One Ring was in the middle of my floor. 

Closer examination revealed that the ringwraiths fell of their base and were inches away from diving after the Ring.

And my file cabinets?  There's eight drawers worth in two rows of four.  Every other one was about an inch open -- in a checkerboard sort of pattern.

This latter fact actually weirded me out more than anything else.  Yes, the file drawers are on sliders -- but they're heavy.  They're filled to the brim.  Last time I had to take one off its sliders (stupid power outlet is behind them), I had a heck of a time getting it back on its sliders because I couldn't lift the damn thing more than a quarter inch.  And the earthquake battered my wall unit around enough that half the drawers were jerked from their usual resting place.

Yep.  That's a lot of force.