Wake me when the big one hits

After a pretty restless night of not much sleep, I was pretty surprised this morning to see that we had one of the bigger earthquakes on record here in the Midwest overnight.

The Chicago Tribune reported that this was a near-record event, but it must have happened during the little bit of time that I was sleeping because I didn't notice it. Folks closer to the epicenter experienced some damage, and even people around here got rattled around a bit. My mother-in-law, who lives near Indy, was shaken awake.

It also awakened my wife, who is a very light sleeper. At that time of the morning though, she's pretty groggy. She wasn't sure at first if it was a quake, a strong wind, or if I was shaking the bed. She finally concluded that since everything was rattling, it must be a quake. But she didn't try to wake me.

Nothing and no one else in my house was disturbed, although with four kids, the house is such a mess that shaking it up might actually make it cleaner.