All Shook Up - Earthquake in VA?!

Today has been a doozie! I started out the morning seeing what looked like a 6-inch piece of gray string on the floor. Turned out what I thought was a string was actually a dead snake in my bedroom floor. One of the lovely four legged children, must have brought it in from going out to potty during the night. The cat use to bring me presents like this, but now the dogs are getting in on the action. It was 'sweet' but I surely hope that they don't get into a habit of bringing things like this into the house.

Then there was the earthquake this afternoon, the very first one that I've actually felt. Amazing! I had been through two others before and never even knew that they had happened. Today however was a totally different story. We were all visiting in the conference room when the ceiling tiles began to shake (sort of like when a heavy duty AC unit kick on), but then there was the noise that sounded like a freight train. Since the office has a train track behind it I ducked outside to take a peek. No train derailing, but the windows on the daycare center next door were ripping. It was quite surreal to watch.

UPDATE: There have been several aftershocks. Nothing big, but aftershocks nonetheless. Heard on the radio that the earthquake was a 5.8 and that the last time there was one of that magnitude here was in 1871. There was also a rumor that the Washington Monument was leaning, which turned out to be incorrect but the monument does have cracks which has caused the National Parks Service to close the Washington Monument until repairs can be made.