Shook Me All Night Long

For the past seven months or so, I have lived in an apartment on the 14th floor of my building. Well, technically, this isn't true. I actually live on what is physically the 13th floor, but the building doesn't actually have a 13th floor because of superstitions, etc. 

I didn't realize that this was something they actually did, like do all elevators not have a 13th floor button? I feel like I would like living on the 13th floor a lot better if it would just have the balls to admit, "Hey, bitch. 13th floor. Holler." Whatever, it has a killer view of campus and LA smog.

Anyway, one of my roommates is shitty. My refrigerator's crooked. Things break. It all looks really nice, but it's basically a really cheaply made apartment and I'm looking forward to moving out. The main thing I hate, though, about living so high up is how ridiculously exaggerated the shaking is way up here when we have earthquakes. Every little inching quake in Southern California freaks me out because it seems so much bigger on the 13th floor. I'm sure my building is all retrofitted and on rollers (however that works...) and wonderful, but I haven't been in a BIG earthquake since 1994 Northridge (I was 5 years old). I don't know what I would do, exactly; at this point, my plan of attack is to save my laptop and hide under my sort-of half-lofted bed. Hopefully my bed holds up, though, because some days the girls that live above me march around in their trampy shoes so loudly it sounds like they're going to crash through my ceiling anyway, so I don't trust the stability of my ceiling when the "BIG ONE" finally comes.

Anyway, we had a little one a couple hours ago

 quake.wr.usgs.gov

It's that big blue square on the map. It was only a 4.4, which is moderate, but I sure felt it, as did others farther away. I don't know what I'll do if we get a 6-mag or greater while I'm up here, so I'm hoping I'm good until I move out in a week!