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Saturday, January 20, 2007

10/16 Hawaii Welcomed Me Home with a Bang

I think most of you on the mainland already received the word that all is fine in Hawaii - and those of you who live here, well, you already know as well.

Christmas Break was just a tiny bit stressful with all of the surprise adventures I got to experience on the side. Some of the adventures I knew about in advance, the whole issue of my grandparents in the nursing home and auctioning off their things, for example. I was also pretty sure I would make my first post-Jay visit to Kansas City and it was a given that my emotions would be stirred. I wasn't expecting my neice, Holly, to have emergency surgery nor my sister to elope, nor my Grandma to act out badly enough for them to have to put her in the dementia ward. I would like to say that I didn't expect to be greeted my first morning back with an earthquake, either, but that is not completely true.

I needed to run just a few errands after I arrived home from the airport Saturday evening. As I pulled in off the street and began to back into where I would normally park, I felt strange. For whatever reason, I didn't feel clear to park there. Then I stopped and looked through my car, the question, "Is there anything in here that you are not ready to loose?" ran through my head. I didn't even really think it odd at the time. I gathered together everything that might be important and put it into my bag. I did the same thing with my luggage. Anything that I might need, I put together in one place. Usually it takes me a week or two to completely unpack, but Saturday I just felt the need to do it all. I finally thought about the weirdness of what I was doing, and wondered if we were going to have a flood or windstorm of some sort. I fell asleep knowing that something would be different in the morning, but not exactly sure what.

After active dreams (Denise I will email you the gist of them as most of them concerned you - don't worry, they weren't bad!) I woke up around 5am and drifted between this world and the twilight world until my rude awakening around 7:07am.

After the initial shaking, I went and stood in the doorway to Kate's bedroom and asked her, "Did I just experience my first real earthquake?" Before I finished my question the rolling part of the quake started. That was a weird sensation! Once it finally passed, I checked the radio stations and just as I realized that none of them had live coverage, our electricity went out. Silly me, when I get nervous, I have to go visit the restroom - which is exactly where I was when the 6.0 aftershock hit. hehe (I later found out that one of Kate's friends on the Big Island had his toilet blow up. Yikes! I am glad that mine didn't!)

The loss of cell phone coverage freaked us out for a few minutes as we pondered the possibilities - Were we bombed? Did Mauna Loa blow? Was this just a run of the mill earthquake?

Well, by now everyone knows that we had a 6.7 earthquake, followed by a 6.0 aftershock and many other smaller movements of the earth. Most of Oahu has electricity, although our neighborhood does not. I am typing this from school. It has been overcast for the past couple of days and today it is raining pretty good. Other than that, there is a lot of cleanup happening on the Big Island and, obviously, we still have some cable and electricity issues, but nothing major.

I really need to get to work, but I thought I would send a shout out to those of you who might be wondering what is happening down here.

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