brown outs and rumbles

We've had an eventful evening here on our side of the world.  

We had dinner with frineds and then put the boys down and began to watch a movie when all the power in the house went out but the tv and dvd player.  It seems we were the only house in the neighborhood having a brown out this time.  We've had them before and they're not our favorite occurance.  We have to shut the power off to the whole house and the only way to know if the power has come back to full voltage is to keep going back out every few minutes to flip the breaker.  After about 30 minutes, our living room had become an oven and we were just about ready to get the boys up and go over to the guest house for the night where the power was just fine, but Joel checked one more time and wahlah! the power was back and better than ever! We actually had 200 of 220 volts coming into the house.  It's never that good on a normal day so we were thrilled!  It's the small things that make us smile!

 

We started up our movie again and about 10 minutes later, we heard a rumbling coming toward us from outside.  I don't remember earthquakes in California doing that when I was little.  It's like it's rolling up toward the house.  Well, because the structures of the houses here are less than "code" for an earthquake, we both bolted from the couch once we realized that what we were hearing/feeling was, in fact, an earthquake.  "Get the boys" was the unspoken word between us.  Just as we got to their doors, it stopped.  We glanced at each other, waited and realized it was done.  Just like that and our hearts were beating out of our chests.  Whew, so glad it wasn't a big one. 

 

I wonder, when will all this become normal?  I suppose one day we'll have the same thing happen again and we'll not even notice.