Thursday, November 02, 2006

Earthquake!!!

Okay, now that I have a few minutes to breath, before I plunge in again for next week, I thought I would tell an interesting story about the Sunday that an earthquake hit Hawaii. It's the only earthquake I've ever felt...

My roommate, Caleb, was house-sitting for a couple that went to the mainland for three weeks. Saturday, October 14th, I spent the night at the house with him and James Lui (an ex-roommate, current friend). We'd all stayed up pretty late and when we finally went to bed, I crashed on the master bed, which lucky for me had a memory foam mattress.

I woke up at 7:05 am Sunday morning to rain pounding on the roof. I got up, looked out at the solid gray world, and then went back to bed. After laying there for only a short time (later I found out it was at 7:07 am) there was a slight shaking of the bed. Thinking the family's dog had gotten into the room and was jumping on the bed, I stirred slightly. When I realized there was no dog a sudden thought went crashing through my mind...EARTHQUAKE!!! Then, my mind crashed again back to sleep. You know what they say about memory foam: you can jump on one end and not spill a drop of wine from a glass on the other. It wasn't until later that I realized that if it had been more serious (it was a 6.5 on the richter scale) I would have been buried while still sleeping.

The day proceeded on a normal basis...as normal as you can get with no electricity. The entire city was out all day. In fact, most of the state was out all day. While it was still light out (if you call iron gray light) it wasn't too bad. However, once night fell, things became a little different. I became bored out of my mind. I tried to read but the light from the flash light was annoyingly bright. My friend, James, was over at my apartment with me and we sat on the couch in the dark, wondering what we were going to do. Since it was only 8:00 pm, we didn't want to go to bed. I kept thinking about my movies and wanting to watch one. When I finally voiced this, James jumped up and told me to grab my laptop. Of course, my battery was dead by now. But we took it out to his car, plugged an ac adaptor into his cigarette lighter and then plugged my laptop in. The best part about it was the fact that the lighter didn't work unless the car was on. So, we sat in his car with it running for 2 1/2 hours watching "The Chronicles of Narnia," him in the driver's seat, me in the passanger's. It was pretty funny. Half an hour after it finished, the lights came on. Another great adventure in Hawaii.