We Survived.... it all

Well, the title pretty much sums it up.  At some point I will probably get around to posting some of the highlights of our summer, but for now, I'm just gonna fill you in on the last few weeks... they were quite the doozie.  So let's go back to Friday, August 19th.   It was a beautiful, sunny day, the birds were singing, the wind was blowing, or so I'm told.  I was in my lab, stressing out and frantically going through my thesis presentation trying to fix my animations that had decided to stop working exactly 30 min before my defense.  (on a related note, i have a curse when it comes to power point presentations, they just never seem to work for me)  Anyways, I got them working. and was able to give my presentation without shaking too much.  This picture isn't too good, but our camera doesn't do well in dark rooms.

And I passed!! So I am now a master of science!! woo hoo! and I'm way less stressed than I was for.... um... about the last two years.  So after we had that behind us we went out and partied, sorta.  We finally saw the last Harry Potter movie and went shopping for some stuff we've wanted/needed for a little while.
So then the next Monday, the 22nd, Dallin started his last year of law school! (which we are way excited about)  And I went to school and work.  We thought we were settling in for another normal week, but oh were we wrong.  Tuesday, I went to work in the morning and then ran back to campus for a few meetings that I had to wrap things up at school.  I finished with one meeting just before 2 and had gone back to my lab in to wait for the next meeting when the building started shaking.  Being from CA, I'm pretty used to earthquakes, and the shaking was pretty small (at first) so I looked around and thought to myself, "oh an earthquake, didn't know they had any of those around here".  And continued to sign on to my e-mail.
Then, it really started shaking, I mean, walls moving, dust falling from the ceiling, shaking.  I did a quick check of the room I was in.

• Pre-WWII building, sort of falling apart without any help.  
• Large bookshelf to my left with lots of heavy books and equipment on it, not anchored to the wall.  
• Large filing cabinet to my right, with lots of heavy equipment and tools in it, also not anchored to the wall.  
• Large bookshelf by the door, same story.  
• And finally, big glass fish tank, right behind me, and you guessed it, not anchored to anything.  

I quickly put on  my shoes, slip ons or I'd of left 'em.  Grabbed my bag, if the building was going down I wanted my stuff safe, forget about the $10,000 camera siting on the table next to me, I had a good apple in that bag.  And I ran!  Which is totally not what you are supposed to do in an earthquake, but given the circumstances, I felt justified, in fact, I was one of the last ones out of the building.  By the time I got out the shaking had pretty much stopped, so we all just stood around for a few minutes and then decided the building wasn't going to fall down after all and went back to our labs.
One of the great things about having a lab in a really old, pretty small, sort of neglected building on campus is that there was no one there to tell us not to go back in.  All the other buildings on campus were evacuated for 45 min - 1 hr, but no one even came to check on our building.  The phone lines were all jammed so Dallin walked over to my lab because apparently his office building was evacuated and then closed for the rest of the day.  And then we walked to our car which was parked at Dallin's school (about 4 miles or so) because the metro was packed and running slow, and the busses were packed and stuck in traffic that was much slower than walking.  It's kind of a mad house in DC when the entire federal gov., and lots of other businesses all shut down at the same time.  
It turns out the earthquake was only a 5.9, which isn't too terribly big, but they don't usually have earthquakes at all out here, so there was a decent amount of damage.  Actually, the last earthquake this size was about 100 yrs ago.  The Washington monument cracked, the national cathedral was damaged pretty badly, and the top of some of the spires fell off of the Washington DC temple.  A bunch of stuff fell over in our house, but nothing broke.
Then as if that wasn't enough, we start getting hurricane warnings on Wednesday.  Yup, a hurricane was headed straight for us, once again, doesn't normally happen.  So as this weekend started, and the storm continued on it's path right for us, we decided to batten down the hatches.  We cancelled Dallin's birthday party, since it was supposed to be outside.  Stake conference was cancelled.  We tried to move our cars away from trees (no easy feat here) and made sure our flashlights had batteries, etc.  Then we waited.  All of Saturday.  And... nothing really happened.  It rained a bunch, and was kind of windy, but by about 10:40 last night we decided to go to bed and just see the aftermath in the morning.  The eye passed to the east of us at about 2 AM and while it wreaked havoc on communities closer to the beach, the most exciting thing out here was the one tree that fell down in our friend's yard.  Thankfully it didn't hit the house, car, or power lines, but Dallin did get to go help cut it up and move it to the road to be picked up later.   So all in all.  We're doing good now and life is way less stressful, for me at least :)
But it still leaves us with one question.  Why does everything that supposedly only happen once every hundred years or so happen while we are here?  First there was the snowstorm that left everything shut down for a week, but it never snows like that here.  Then there was the earthquake, which again, apparently never happens.  Then the hurricane.   My friend Nic blamed it on Obama, but I might just blame it on Marcie, she did just move in.  In any case, as a public service announcement, we might be moving this summer and if we end up moving anywhere near you, you might want to stock up on emergency supplies, we seem to attract natural disasters. :)