“Hey Dave, what’s shaken?”

So read the subject heading of the email from my brother "Kevin." He heard about today's earthquake that originated in Mineral, Virginia, a town not far from Richmond, and wanted to know if I was okay. The 5.9 scale tremor was felt all the way to New York City, so it's a safe bet we felt it here in DC as well.

Did I feel anything? Of course not. I was in my car and had no idea what was happening, until I got to the Kinko's at Ballston. I had some papers that needed signing and faxing. The idiot running the place told me I had to evacuate the building with the others, and "go to the other Kinko's at Courthouse." She made no mention of the earthquake, and telling me to go to another location left me in the dark. I saw people standing outside of buildings all along the "Orange Line" corridor here in Arlington. So the other Kinko's was evacuated as well. (Remember, I still didn't know there was an earthquake. Maybe a pre-9/11 bomb scare or something.) Finally, I went to a computer repair store near my place, and THEY finally told me it was an earthquake.

Meanwhile, here at mwbh, we have a lot of traffic to our archives of July 2010, wherein is contained our account of the last tremor to hit this area. I must have told a riveting account back then, since no one could wait for me to mention this one.

Speaking of which, the most that happened was a few papers and books hitting the floor. Nothing broken, nobody hurt.

One thing worth mentioning. The news channels are showing crowds of people trying to reach loved ones on cellphones to tell them they're okay. With the lines being so crowded in these situations, they would have been better off sending text messages, which use less bandwidth, and get through more easily.

Let's remember that one for the next one, okay kids?

(Note to Paul C: I don't know how that happened, but I deleted it. Must be all that really fast typing.)

UPDATE 1: What did I write in July of last year that was so AWESOME???

UPDATE 2: Buzzfeed details the full extent of the devastation.