On the contrary, mon frere: After a long blogging dry spell, the damn thing might have been just the tonic I needed to get me to swing back into action. (To the extent that typing messages that 10 people will ever read qualifies as "action.")
So, just to get the Q&A out of the way: Yep, I felt the quake. The floor shook for what felt like three or four seconds - enough time for me to remember that I should probably get underneath the desk I'm sitting in front of, but not enough time for me to actually do it. It was strong enough to freak me out a little bit, but not serious enough to rattle dishes or knock stuff off of walls. As of right now, it's being reported as a 5.0, which makes it the second biggest one I've felt so far.
Oh, also the U.S. Geological Survey web site says it took place about five miles from where I'm sitting.
Which I really don't like that much.
Anyway, how about a map? Here's how it looked on the USGS site shortly after the shaking was done:
I think the red makes it look a little more dramatic than it actually was - the colors just correspond to how recently the quake took place, though. It's the (huge!) size of the box that shows the relative strength of the quake compared with other recent ones in our area.
And now that I look at the map: Good lord, there have been a lot of earthquakes around here lately.
This is also a good excuse to tell you a short but touching** story about my family. When I first told my parents that I was planning to move to California and how happy I was about it, I knew they would share my excitement. Indeed, the first words out of my mother's mouth were these: "They have earthquakes there."
* a 100 percent chance, to be exact
** or whatever the opposite of touching is
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