Earthquake '08

So as many of you know, we living here in Southern California recently experienced a larger earthquake.  I say larger not because it did any damage, but because we actually have a lot of seismic activity in the area around Los Angeles and most people don't feel it.  This however, was a 5.4 centered on Chino Hills, a mere 26 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. Personally, I have been living in Los Angeles since April of 2003 and haven't felt a single quake since moving here. I guess that makes me lucky, but I always kind of wondered what it would feel like to experience one.  Well, now I can say I felt one.  You could say I was lucky that I was working at the time and sitting on the 4th floor of an office building that was fitted with rollers that ensured that instead of breaking from the shaking, the building would gently rock bath and forth, absorbing the force of the quake.  I kind of do feel lucky, in that the damned building didn't collapse around my ears.  On the other hand, being high up in a building that is on rollers kind of feels like the world that seemed so solid a second ago, is not only now insubstantial, but undulating  in large sickening waves that might pitch you out the window to the ground below.  My guess is that what I felt was a little more dramatic than it would have been had I been standing on the  street, but since it was ultimately safer, how can I complain?  Later that night I went to an appointment in a very tall building in my neighborhood, all the way up on the 27th floor.  I can say that it made me think twice about aftershocks before getting in the elevator and riding to the clouds, but knowing that these buildings are built to withstand the shaking, made me feel comforted. Phew.  Although, they say the "big one" is still coming in the next 30 years, so we'll see how good those rollers really are.  *fingers crossed*