Would You Like Reno Shaken or Stirred?

Maybe there’s just too much development going on in our part of the world. Maybe it was just time.

Whatever the reason, that 4.7 quake scared the fear of God into me late Friday night.

I was enjoying my night alone watching TV (13 Going on 30 on Fox), typing my what is turning out to be a laborious screenplay, and eating Panda Express (chopstick free) on my bed with my kitties surrounding me.

It was nice.

I then turned to watch NBC news so I could see Hugh Laurie on the Tonight Show. The kitties went wandering into the living room.

The news ended at 11:32 or so, went to some commercials then Jay Leno started doing his monologue.

A quick ax-handling sound burst from the front door. I knew I locked it, but was someone trying to break in to get me?

Then the TV reception went wonky, my bed started to rumble, and the already cracked walls came alive with force. “Oh my God,” I thought.

But it was too late. Wall hangings started swinging while my heart pumped faster with anxiety. “Oh God.”

It lasted for about ten seconds, the rolling for a few more seconds.

Then dead silence. That post-quake eerie silence.

I darted my eyes around the room – the standing lamp swayed, the license plate behind the painting scraped the wall. My pounding heart distracted me from Jay Leno’s monologue.     

I grabbed my cell phone and called my parents out of shear terror. They too felt it and said their dogs didn’t even wake up. Odd.

My kitties made no sound from the other room.

NBC broke in to say there’d been a quake (thanks for alerting me) and that they were waiting for a magnitude.

A second temblor then rolled. “Oh God, oh God.” I can only imagine what I sounded like to my parents on the phone.

The two news anchors looked around, above them at the swinging lights and commented, “I think there’s another one.”

In a twisted way, I was happy to watch two people share my same experience.

Throughout this ordeal, my bed shook a little the whole time, but I also could not separate it from my pounding heart, so I could be totally wrong.

Anyway, I started to calm down a little after some reprieved shaking, I got off the phone and watched Hugh Laurie in his natural-born British accent. Took my mind off what happened.

Then a quick third shaking disturbed the wall crackings. I rolled again. That was it; I knew I’d be up for the rest of the night.

An hour later, I gave in and took a Relpax for my foreshadowed migraine and closed my eyes with the light on of course. Thankfully it stopped and so did my heart pounding.

But as I write this, it’s been a little more than 24 hours since that large one, I could be for another soon. 

Northwest Reno, if you don’t live here, has been targeted (by God!) to receive multiple earthquakes since February. Most are 1.0 or 2.0, but sometimes they flare up and belch damage across the area.  

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