It’s an Earthquake! It’s a Hurricane!

Nope. It’s just something to talk about in August.

Some places August is the peak of summer. Some places it’s the end of summer, when kids go back to school. Some places it’s time to retreat to the air conditioning. Here, it’s recess.

This is the first time since I started back to work fulltime that both the House and Senate have been in recess at the same time for more than a day. That means everyone wears jeans to work, catches up on emails from three months ago, has lunch at new restaurants outside our general sphere and either gets off a little early or drops in to work a few minutes late. Ah, recess.

But we don’t have anything to talk about during recess. You know? Paul Ryan hasn’t come out with a new budget number in months. Coburn hasn’t resigned from a Gang of 6 or 5 in eons. The president’s T-time is thoroughly uninteresting. And we are political nerd buckets up here in D.C.

So we got an earthquake.

Truth be told, our building is a bit … vintage. Not sweetly vintage like old lace or majestically vintage like the Library of Congress. More of a 1982 gray marble and brown stucco kind of vintage.

I don’t know anything about earthquakes. Never met one until yesterday. So when the building shook, my honest to goodness gut reaction was that we’d had a huge wind gust. (Maybe the hurricane is early?) We used to get disturbing wind gusts like that up high in the Wells Fargo building. So then I thought it must be a construction explosion or the collapse of our underground parking garage. Then there was the other kind of explosion to think about.

Since the other three in my office didn’t seem to think it was an early hurricane, we headed for the stairwell with the other tenants of our fourth floor abode. We were in the stairwell before I considered an earthquake but that sounded awfully implausible. The fourth floor is not a pleasant place to be in a vintage building when it’s rocking, so it really wouldn’t have changed our course of action, either way. Sticking together, the four of us traversed a few flights of stairs to a grassy lawn across the street.

Johnny on the Spot, Little Will, had texted me to see if I felt the earthquake before I even got across the street. Calls weren’t going out. I texted Brandon just up the street and confirmed that a) they felt it and b) they were evacuated. That done, I needed to know where the epicenter of the alleged earthquake was. Ok, come on people, I don’t know anything about earthquakes! For all I knew there was a crack in the ground on Tennessee Avenue! (That’s where Isaiah stays.) 

This is Johnny on the Spot, Will.
He does beautiful leather work.
He has a beautiful wife.
Happy anniversary to him
and his beautiful wife!

So poor Will caught the brunt of my bossy texts as I demanded he watch the news and find out how far away and what direction the center of the quake was. He complied about the same time as my coworker found a website that would load. And we got a text to and from our dear babysitter. The epicenter was 90 miles south, so my little family was all safe.

Just for fun, a list of the absurdities that trickled up and down the streets in the hour following “the quake.”

1. Pisa called. They said they have the copyright on leaning towers.
2. The Rayburn House Office Building stairs collapsed.
3. The Rayburn House Office Building floors collapsed.
4. The Rayburn House Office Building ceiling collapsed.
5. The National Cathedral fell down.
6. You can take your cars from the House surface lots and go home.
7. You may not take cars out of the House surface lots. You have to stay here on foot….forever.
8. There are cracks in the metro rails. (P.S. You couldn't pay me enough to go anywhere underground yesterday. I hate underground as it is.)
9. Henry Waxman is wandering the halls of Congress all by himself. (Why is he here?)
10. Bullfeathers ran out of beer.

Henry Waxman. No comment.

None of the above has been substantiated. There is some damage to the National Cathedral, but it did not fall down. There are four cracks in the Washington Monument, but it is certainly not leaning. They were inspecting it by helicopter shortly after the quake. And of course, Bullfeathers is ready for anything. They did not run out of beer.

So usually in August we’d talk about vacation, the weather, and what a drag it will be when Congress comes back to town and we have to wear suits again. But instead, we’ll talk about the earthquake for the rest of the month.

Unless of course the hurricane gets us this weekend.