SkyWatch Friday: Not my fault
OK so it was Valentine's Day and I'd already opened my candy and it was basically the shank of the evening.
I was upstairs in the guest room, watching boring men's Olympic skating.
Yes. I was watching it but yes: It was boring. The men's part, I mean.
If you liked the guy skaters, I am happy for you.
So anyway on account of the fact that we live less than fifty miles from Shaw Air Force Base, we often see and hear military aircraft passing overhead.
Specifically, many is the time I have heard those who's-your-daddy helicopters cruising across the sky at night, and they are extra loud.
Their rotors beat the air in a way that causes a significant amount of vibration in structures on the ground.
So it was that as Hanyu or Brown or Ten or whomever was leaping and whirling in some androgynous sparkly ruffled getup or other, I sensed the approach of one of those helicopters.
Only, this time the noise was a lot louder than usual, and lasted much longer.
It got so intense that I imagined the subject helicopter was about to land on top of our house.
The pictures on the walls of our guest room had begun chattering like castanets.
I muted the television but by then the sound was noticeably diminished.
TG got up from where he'd been sitting downstairs. He went outside.
Next he came upstairs to see me.
"Did you hear that?" he said.
"Well yes, how could I not?" I said. "It was one of those helicopters. Go and look again because I think it's coming back!"
Ahem. No. I was wrong.
But this time it was not my fault.*
Because what I'd heard was an earthquake. And I wasn't expecting that.
Originally measured as a four point four magnitude, it was later officially reduced to a four point one.
Ground zero was approximately sixty miles to the west of Columbia, in Edgefield, South Carolina.
It was a brand-new experience for me: Watching Suffering through Olympic men's figure skating while sitting on the bed in my own guest room on Valentine's Day night after a week during which copious amounts of frozen precipitation assaulted my domicile, living to tell about an earthquake that I mistook for a helicopter.
But there is a first time for everything.
And that is all for now.
*Pun wholly intended.
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Happy Friday ~ Happy Weekend
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Reader Comments (9)
Beautiful sky shots and what a great story. I'm glad you are o.k. I hear helicopters above my house very often and also think they will land but I've never experienced an earthquake. My brother has lived in San Francisco since the mid 1980s and has been through a bad earthquake but in NC where I live I've never felt one.
I heard about that earthquake and thought of you. How crazy!
I experienced one small earthquake. I was sitting and the couch and I thought someone shook it. I actually looked around to see who was messing with me. No one was there and I thought I was imagining things, until I heard there had been an earthquake in Michigan. Who would have thought it?
Love your sky shots!
OMGGGG!!!! RUN JENNY! RUN!!!Hahaaaa
No Way!
Glad it wasn't stronger!
((HUG))
You're getting way too much excitement over there in South Carolina!
Wow! That is quite the night. But thank God you are safe. It could have been a lot worse. Have a wonderful weekend.
Love those cloud shapes... a whale and a dragon? Congrats on your first earthquake. After experiencing a few of them, you just learn to ignore them and go on about your business (unless they are big ones!).
Ha, I actually ENJOY figure skating (men's and everyone else's), but I've never had the earth shake for me while watching it! Are you SURE you aren't that into it? ;-)
The clouds are lovely - especially first one, I love how it ends with a little flourish, and I hope no damage was done by the earth-shake. I've never been through one myself, and hope not to! I'm sure that experience rattles more than the pictures on the wall...
I don't enjoy the figure skating event either, so I'd prefer the earthquake too.
Your writing style is hilarious! :)