Rockin' and a Rollin'

It's 4:37AM on Friday and my bed is swaying slightly. Hmmm, sounds great....except I am alone. I sit up and listen as the heating system (located in the room behind my bedroom) rattles to life with a loud clunk! and proceeds with various clings! and clanks! as though it were coming to life and slowly disentangling itself from the structure built around it.

Hmmm, strong winds, maybe?

I have lived in the Midwest twice in my life: once, for a year and a half in Minnesota while doing my first academic postdoc out of grad school at a large research university and again for the past 8 months, this time in another state, for my first industrial position.

And one thing I have noticed in my two plus years of living in the Midwest is that the wind blows constantly here. Not just blows---whips.

Not really an issue unless it is -30 degrees below (actual air temperature) and you are outside waiting on the bus that takes you to campus. The bus that is always late.

Anyway, where I am currently living is a POC (translation: piece of crap). How I got here is a long story but the synopsis is there was no time between accepting this position and the start date to come out and look at apartments (they were very short-handed). I went through HR to find this duplex where I am currently living. I moved from the East Coast a week before my start date to find that while yes, it is technically a duplex as it is divided into two living spaces, it really is just a double-wide, extra long tornado magnet (translation: mobile home) built up on cinder blocks to create a crawl space underneath.

It is covered in vinyl siding that billows every time the wind blows. There is no insulation so you can hear the wind hit the northwest corner of the "duplex", blow down the length of that wall towards the south, come around the corner and rattle all of the siding on the backside of the "duplex".

The first time I heard it, having never lived in a structure with vinyl siding on it, I screamed "OMG! There are rats in the walls!" Once I calmed down some, and stepped off the coffee table, I noticed the rustling sound was rhythmic and not random which you would expect sounds to be if made by nasty vermin chewing through drywall. I went outside and I could see the siding billowing like a flag in the wind. It was coming several inches up from the plywood (Dear God, please let there be at least some plywood under there!). After a hysterical phone call to my parents, I was reassured that this was normal to an extent.

So when the heating system was clinging and a-clanging on Friday, I thought the wind must be whipping up. Except the siding wasn't making that billowing sound....hmmm, my bottle of water on the night stand was beginning to rock.

Maybe it is the really hot next door neighbor doing his laundry and his washer was unbalanced?

Nope, there is no water running (yeah, I can hear that too--like I said, no insulation.).

Every thing was rattling at this point. Surely, it couldn't be an earthquake here! I always imagined my first experience with an earthquake would be out in California during an ACS convention (American Chemical Society--every other one seems to be in either San Diego or San Francisco).

But yes, it was an earthquake--which they are now describing as a 5.2 in magnitude. Immediately, everyone starts wondering if it is a prelude to the big one--meaning the New Madrid fault.

Hmmm, which leads me to wonder: how do tornado magnets fare during earthquakes????