"Did you feel that???"

Well, I can now say that I've survived my very first earthquake. And, thankfully, it was personally undramatic, which I deeply appreciate. Growing up, my visions of earthquake (other than a hairy fat guy in a blue singlet) were straight out of sensationalist Michael Bay movies. I imagined a huge crack in the ground opening up, and people falling in to their deaths. I'm happy to say my experience was nothing like that (not to minimize anybody who was in a less safe situation).

I was working here in Morristown, NJ and sitting at my desk when the ground and my surroundings most certainly began to shake. Honestly, I thought nothing of it. The feeling wasn't much different than when we get heavy winds hitting the windows. We've also got construction going on downstairs, so it easily could have been the result of some heavy machinery. However, the shaking occurred for too long and at a sustainable rate. Finally, one of the women in the office asked, "Is that an earthquake?" It's as if she just said what we were all thinking. Suddenly we all stood up -- ground still shaking a bit -- and agreed that that's what was happening. We glanced out of our suite and saw that the rest of the building was evacuating, so surely it wasn't just our floor.

When we got outside, and everybody started talking, we learned that DC/Virginia had been hit with a 5.8 scale earthquake. It seemed strange to us that we would feel that, though. When we re-entered the building about 20 minutes later, I checked my Facebook page to realize that people from all parts of the tri-state area (and beyond) had felt the tremors.

I've reached out to family and friends and it appears that everybody is okay. I hope everybody else, as well as their families, are safe as well.