Earthquake - San Diego

Wow - San Diego has been my home town for about 15 years now and the earthquake yesterday was definitely the biggest I have ever felt. It happened about 3:40 pm. I was in my second floor art studio when the house began to bounce up and down. I have been in enough earthquakes to immediately know what it is - after a few seconds the shaking generally dissapates and life goes on. But this was different, the intensity kept building and my husband shouted upstairs making the suggestion to me that I might want to come down and get out of the house. I ran downstairs with paint brush still in hand - it was a strange feeling, running down with the stairs moving under my feet. We rushed outside and our tall palm trees were swaying as the ground seemed to lift and slam back down. The whole world shuddered for another moment. And then it was over. We walked around the house be be sure there was no damage and as you can see from the photo and the view down the street, all is well. A short time later my kids showed up for Easter dinner. Both my son Adam (a tall handsome paramedic and web designer), my daughter Kimberly ( a smart beautiful CPA) and her husband Ted (my adorable District Attorney son-in-law) all had experienced it just as violently as we did and perhaps more as they live in downtown San Diego, a few miles closer to the center of the quake. At first, news reports said the earthquake registered as 6.8 but they shortly upgraded that to 7.2. Inside the house, some things were knocked from shelves, a painting I had drying on a small easel had jumped onto the floor and all the paintings on the walls were askew. There have been so many after shocks that I have lost count. The most recent was this morning at 4:15 am - that one got me up out of bed and I see on the internet it was a 5.1. I am feeling very very lucky and my thoughts now are with those people at the epicenter - I hope the damage is minimal and the injurys few.