Christina Dulude

I felt an earthquake last night! The epicenter was in Illinois, but supposedly the quake was felt from Indiana to Missouri and Iowa. I was lying in my bed, semi-asleep at 1:00am, when my bed vibrated for a few seconds, and the windows shook. I remember thinking, “Hm, that’s weird. This must be what an earthquake feels like,” and went back to sleep. Then, this morning I fired up my web browser when I got to work, and lo and behold — earthquake in the midwest.

Which reminds me of the dramatic weather the midwest is best known for — tornadoes. I was in a tornado-warning situation only about a month ago, the kind where the sirens blare and people are herded into some arbitrary centrally-located safe place. It was in Bloomington — I was at a concert at the music school at the time.

Another notable tornado warning happened a little over a year ago in Bloomie. It was in the early summer, I was at home in my apartment, and the sirens start going off. For some reason, I decide that my rickety second-floor apartment was not the place to be, and opt to leave and drive somewhere, which I know is totally the wrong thing to do. So I get in my car and debate where to go, and realize: “I’ll go to the Union Building on campus! Nothing can harm the Largest Student Union In The World!”

We used to have hurricanes periodically in the northeast growing up. When Hurricane Gloria struck in 1985, it knocked off our electricity for a week. My parents had a refrigerator stocked full with meat in the basement (I actually have no idea what the purpose of all this meat was, come to think of it). Anyway, when the power went out, we didn’t have a generator at the time, so all the meat went bad.

We also didn’t have any water for a week, because our house had an electric-powered well. I think we bought drinking water from the grocery store, but we had to take baths in the lake in the center of town. Although that part was kind of fun, now that I think about it.

I went to Bloomington this past weekend. It was a friend’s birthday on Saturday, so we had a party. I stayed at Adam’s apartment from Friday to Monday, because he was out of town for much of the time. I told people I was staying at my Bloomie timeshare.

Besides Thomas’ birthday party, I also did some hiking, went to a concert at the music school, saw the film Cinema Paradiso at the Buskirk-Chumley, and just did a lot of general barhopping, carousing and visiting with friends. And whacked some golf balls at the driving range.

On an unrelated subject, I was a bit disappointed in the cicada infestation (we don’t have them in Indianapolis). After all the publicity, I was expecting mass swarms of the little buggers (pun intended) everywhere. And there were swarms, but not mass swarms. But they were certainly loud enough! It must be neat to see them erupt from the ground.