Did the earth move for you too, baby?

Sadly, there will be no pictures in todays's post, because I was forced to steal the batteries out of one camera to make someone's light-up Pooh bear doll illuminate the scary darkness once again, and the batteries from the other camera so that we could continue to play MySims Secret Agents on the Wii without undue interruption. This was not a result of our perpetual brokeness, but rather my absurd inability to write the word "batteries" down on the grocery list. I write "Dr. Pepper" and "Nutter Butters" and "bacon" on the list every time I walk past it, so you would think I could get int the habit of writing down "batteries" at the same time, but I must have some sort of mental block against things that are merely useful and not also tasty.

And besides, the only excitement we had this week, other than my husband's 45th birthday - which only counts as exciting if you get all jazzed over telling a 3-year-old not to open Daddy's presents over and over until she cries, was the earthquake.

YES, I SAID EARTHQUAKE.

Now we live on the east coast, which is not the most seismically active part of the world, so even though I know all you west coasters are rolling your eyes and going, "Huh. Big whoop," it was still a big deal to me. I am a leeeetle bit of a geology/paleontology nerd, and if you came up to me and said, "Hey, wanna see some Pre-Cambrian rocks?" I'd be all "HELL YES." Last weekend I was playing with the girls and one of them got bored and wanted to see what was on TV, and when I turned it on and looked at the guide, the first thing that came up was the History Channel and they were showing something called "How The Earth Was Made." Now, I know how the earth was made. There was nothing this show could have told me that I didn't already know, but even though my kids were howling for Spongebob, I forced them to sit through HTEWM in the hopes that maybe they would be infected by my enthusiasm and we could all go back to the Natural History museum with a better appreciation of the wonders contained therein than we did the last time.

One of the best parts of the show, for me anyway, was when they had a graphic of the tectonic plates of the earth - the pieces that slide, bump, and pull apart during earthquakes. It was just utterly fascinating to see all the pieces, and where the boundaries between them fall, and to have it displayed, not on a flat Mercator-style map, but on a rotating globe, just got my geek goose bumps a-poppin'. Now these boundaries are not the only places that have earthquakes, but the plates are part of the mechanism that causes them.

ANYWAY. Earthquakes had been on my mind, and just a few days later, at about 5 a.m. an earthquake of magnitude 3.2 rumbled through our area. The epicenter was in Montgomery county, just north of Washington, D.C., and even though it was mild, earthquakes in this area tend to be felt pretty far from the source so people in Baltimore and Northern Virginia and Annapolis could feel it. Well, those that do not sleep like the dead.

YEP. I SLEPT THROUGH IT. Found out about it on Facebook the next day. Texted my husband to ask if he knew about it, and he said oh yeah, it woke him right up. Sounded like a huge truck was driving right by the house. DAMMIT. Major geologic activity and the one day I'm not up at 5 a.m. to pee is the day it happens. Broke my little geek heart, I tell you.

Naturally, I consoled myself by looking up images of the Burgess Shale on the internet, as anyone would under the circumstances.  Always soothes me when I miss out on the good stuff like meteor showers and earthquakes.