I'll always vividly remember my first earthquake after I had moved to AK from nice, calm MN.

It didn't scare me so much as it just plain fascinated me. It was my first year in Alaska, I was living with my two boys in a rental house on the banks of Willow Creek. This would have been sometime in the fall of 1989, I think. (or else it was in the spring of 1990)

Anyway, it was night and the boys were in bed. I was watching the nightly local news on Channel 2, when all of a sudden the camera that was shooting the news anchors sort of tilted sideways, and the newsreaders stopped speaking and sort of gaped wide-eyed and open-mouthed as they clutched their shaking news desk - and in the same moment the couch I was sitting on started vibrating, and everything in the house started rattling. The weirdest thing of all is that all the walls looked like they had turned into liquid - honest to gawd, they were, like, rippling!

It all happened in the space of probably less than a minute, but it felt much longer than that, of course. I just sat there on my vibrating couch thinking, Wow! Far out! A real earthquake! Damn!

A few minutes later - after the walls had solidified once more and my couch stopped behaving like a rogue sex aid, I had a huge attack of guilt that I hadn't once thought of my precious sleeping children - nor lept into action to save us all from dire destruction and certain death from an earthquake bringing the house down around us. Nope, I had just passively sat there, taking it all in as exotic entertainment. I am a terrible mother, I thought.

But the kids slept through it - although they were both irritated that they had missed the fun when I told them about it the next day.

For the rest of my 6 years in Alaska I only felt a few negligable temblors now and then - and half the time I wasn't sure if they were very small or very distant earthquakes, or if it was just a side effect of some of the Matanuska Thunderfuck I had just smoked.