Friday, July 16, 2010

I feel the earth move...not!

No, I didn't feel last night's earthquake, although apparently folks in close by towns felt it. Then again, it was of 3.6 magnitude, strong enough for light sleepers to feel it, but not enough for folks that sleep like logs to notice. In other words, your perception and experience may vary, even from the people next door. I'm used to loud noises at night, grew up with them, in fact, living near railroad tracks in DC as a preteen, so I grew accustomed to night noise. That earthquake would have had to be stronger for me to notice, as jets from Andrews fly overhead at times, scaring the daylights out of me as they sound like they might crash into the house. Day or night, especially before the airshow in May.

Sleep researcher Stanley Coren wrote in Sleep Thieves that when he was a grad student at Stanford, he felt he generally didn't get a good night's sleep. One morning, he awoke to the clock radio, which reported that an earthquake took place. In his words, "Although I felt that I had been awake all night, I had actually been so soundly asleep that I had completely missed an earthquake that had brought down a large quantity of plaster from the ceiling of our bedroom onto our bed. In fact, as I got up, two large chunks of plaster, each the size of a tennis ball, rolled off my chest, where they had apparently been resting for the hour or more since the earthquake. So much for my experience of a completely sleepless night!" I don't think I'm that oblivious, as there's nothing out of place at home, thankfully.

Of course, this morning's adventure makes me think of a favorite song by Carole King...

No comments: