The East Coast Earthquake and Scrapbooking

Something historic happened on Tuesday.  The East Coast of the United States experienced a 5.8 earthquake—.

For me the event started simple enough.  I was at work and sitting at my desk typing an email. The office was fairly quiet and suddenly there was this shaking—kind of like someone walking really heavily on our concrete floors.  Then suddenly things started to shake even more.  I heard others in the office saying the same thing I was—"What the heck??" 

I stepped out into the hall, which now that I think about it was probably not the best place to be, and watched as a bit of panic set in over the office.  And just as suddenly as the shaking started, it was over.

I did what any good HR person would do and I went to check on the employees to make sure they were OK.  Everyone was a bit shaken but okay. After we all shared our  “I was doing this when the earthquake happened” stories, we tried to go back to work. It was difficult but somehow we made it through the day.

Of course, as the good scrapbooker that I am, I started thinking about how I can document this event.  I knew this was something that was rare and probably (hopefully) wouldn’t happen any time soon. But this kind of event is not something you were able to plan like a trip to the zoo! 

Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures.  In fact when I ran out of the building with the staff, I forgot to grab my phone (purse and keys, too —but let's not talk about that!). 

I was happy that the social media world was exploding.  Twitter and Facebook was all a buzz with information.  I added my input in the form of tweets and re-tweets and Facebook status updates.  So at a minimum, I captured my thoughts and feelings in that form.

On Wednesday morning, both the Baltimore Sun and USA Today had great headlines about the quake. I snapped photos of each front page since I could definitely those.

Now I have all the makings for a good page! My plan is to print out some of my tweets, the headlines photos I snapped and add some journaling about the whole experience. 

I’ll post the finished page soon and I hope that I don't have to create one for Hurricane Irene who may be making an appearance this weekend.  Two natural disasters in one week—now there’s a scrapbook page for you!