rain and earthquakes

It's raining really hard right now. 

When we first moved to Nashville, I realized how much I had missed rain. The sound of it, the white skies and how, afterward, everything looks and smells so much cleaner. In L.A., when it rains, it rains a week at a time, and it feels confusing after day two because you are accustomed to ever-present sun. In the south, it's not so scripted. It catches you off guard, a big, dark cloud rolls in, a quick burst of hard rain and then blue skies and lower temperatures. 

I thought I felt an earthquake this morning, when I was still in bed. I must have imagined it. When we were still in L.A., I felt a couple of the smaller earthquakes. It felt like the floor was rolling. This one didn't feel like that. It just felt like I was being shaken. Strange. 

We moved about two weeks before the last "kinda big" earthquake in Los Angeles. Initially, the report was that a 6.0 earthquake had hit L.A. When I got that news via Twitter, I burst into tears. I knew that my old office building could not seismically withstand a large quake. I thought my co-workers could be trapped or crushed.  

Cell phone service was down, but texting worked. All my friends were OK. The earthquake was later downgraded to a 5.4, and damage was minimal. Still, it was hard to be 2,000 miles away. I wanted to be there. The reporter in me wanted to see and feel it for myself. The friend in me wanted to hug all the people I missed.