Earthquake?

Well, I've been up since 4:35 am or so this morning due to the EARTHQUAKE that we had this morning.

I think that this was the 1st real earthquake I've ever felt. It was a little freaky. Here's my story:

It was sort of warmish last night so we slept with a window open in our bedroom. The window faces west, so it faces the nearby railroad tracks & I think I woke up because the double door to our bedroom started to rattle (we keep one latched closed & it was the one rattling). In my half-asleep numbed by pregnancy 4:30 am brain I was trying to figure out what was going on. Then what felt like a giant nudge to our house really made me sit up in bed. By that time Larry was awake too & we lay there trying to figure out what was happening. It is sort of ironic that right around that time a train did pass by on the railroad tracks, so I was trying to sort out all the things that might have contributed to the weird sensation I had just felt.

Was it just a really large train shaking the ground. We sometimes have 3 mile long trains loaded down with coal or grain pass by - but they never shake things like this just did. Was it a big gust of wind? We get a lot of wind where we are - I don't know, something about Savoy...it is always windier here than elsewhere around (just go to the airport & you'll see). When I first described it to Larry who was not as awake as I when it happened is it felt like God blew really hard on the west side of our house.

Larry was a little worried that it was none of those things and that maybe someone had run their car or something into our corner house. Weirder things have happened & hey, we do live in a college town, and not so far from the U of I that things like that don't happen here. So he got up and went downstairs to see what was what. While he was gone the door continued to rattle for a bit and then stopped. He came back to bed and we lay there listening to the local radio station who about 5 or 10 minutes later confirmed what Larry really thought - it was an earthquake. We kept listening to the radio - Listening to WLS out of Chicago and they were going on and on about it too.

We couldn't get back to sleep so we got up and headed out to the airport to make sure that the airplane was still good too. The hangar it is in is pretty rickety (if you ask me) and Larry has these shelves in the hangar that he was worried about falling over on to the plane's elevator. All was fine at the airport, except for some birds trying to build a nest in the hangar and pooping all over the plane.

Since we were up and out we decided to go to Merry Anne's for breakfast & then home to get ready for the day.

Just a few minutes ago (about 10:20 am) we felt another wave - Larry said it is an aftershock. It was pretty good sized too, I'd say.

Here's some stuff from CNN about the quake: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/18/illinois.earthquake/#cnnSTCVideo

We are only about 130 some miles from the epicenter. Guess that is why we've been feeling it, huh?