So apparently I woke up going, "what the fuck!" when the earth moved (literally) the first time. 

The next time it was, "Joel, stop it!  Oh, aftershock, right." 

Then, "oh shit, the power's out.  Do we have any batteries?  No.  What do we have to eat?  Not much.  What the hell is going on out there?"

Fortunately our friendly local Minneapolis weatherman filled us in, "6.6 earthquake, power's out pretty much everywhere."  Whoa.

Ok, so what do we do now?  Be bored after the book you're reading is done and the PSP has lost it's charge.

Oh!  But I'm supposed to go to work!  But I can't get in touch with anyone, oh well, try anyway, at least my car has a radio.  I get to work and find out it's closed (duh), and the different eating places open (yay for propane and gas stoves!).

Power was back by 4 or 5, apparently we were lucky.

What an interesting (boring) day.

Ok, so you know all about the Navy's prowess with traffic direction.  Now apparently they take on new and more sneaky ways of screwing me over.  This involves a military vehicle misjudging it's height and bashing a pedestrian overpass, making the freeway get entirely shut down.

So, there's me.  Stuck in traffic for 4 hours.  Yes.  4 Hours.

Then, just as I'm beginning to get some momentum, the line connecting my gear shifter to the gears (?) breaks.  So my car is stuck in 3rd gear, and I'm stuck in the middle of a highway.  The police were very nice, and as we speak my car rests in the Home Depot parking lot, because yes, this happened at 11:30 at night.  So tomorrow I get the pleasure of taking care of this mess.

So, how is my gear shifter breaking the Military's fault?  Well, it's safe to say that if it weren't for that 4 hours stuck in traffic (we're talking an hour to go less than a mile), it wouldn't have broke in the middle of the night.  How dare they!  It mightn't have broke at all, maybe it was all that extra wear.

Oh, and after this experience I've decided that if I can afford it the next car I'm getting is an automatic.