In other news today

There was some actual news here today: There was a 5.1 earthquake at 5.39am this morning near Te Aroha, a town roughly an hour’s drive, from Hamilton. I was sound asleep at the time, and it clearly wasn’t strong enough here to wake me up. However, other folks in Hamilton, as well as people in Auckland, said they felt it, and some in Hamilton, at least, were saying that they also felt a much weaker aftershock a little after 11am. I was awake at that time, but didn’t feel that, either.

Hamilton, Leo, and I were never in any danger—this time. The riftz zone that today’s earthquake was in has the potential for causing significant shaking in Hamilton and Auckland. Whether it ever does or not is another matter entirely, and, of course, is entirely unpredictable.

This sort of thing is a good reminder for us all to check our emergency supplies, and I know mine are lacking. While I always have several days of food on hand, I don’t have excess water anymore. Nearly five years ago, I wrote about making emergency preparations after a major storm we’d just experienced. That effort included stockpiling water. Not even a year and a half later, Nigel died, and four months after that, I was moving to Hamilton.

The movers I hired to pack up the house for the move packed all the bottles of water I’d set aside (I’d frankly forgotten about them), something I found out when I started unpacking in Hamilton. The water had been stored for more than 20 months when I found the bottles, so I ended up watering plants with them and putting the emptied milk bottles in the recycling—all except one. The last 3-litre bottle of water went into the bottom of a tall outdoor plant holder I had on my patio so the wind wouldn’t blow it over (it’s pretty lightweight).

In addition to food preparations, I also have to secure my tall furniture (mostly book shelves) to the wall so they won’t fall over if there’s every a big earthquake. I’d talked with Nigel about doing that with the shelved in my office at the last house, but never go around to it. Those same shelves are in my office in this house, too—and still not secured. I was thinking about that job when I checked Facebook and saw a “Memory” about assembling the second set of shelves in my lounge, something I talked about here on the blog a couple days later.

Today, then, was interesting. First, an earthquake happened, not that I knew anything about it at the time. That, then reminded me that I need to beef up my emergency supplies, and finally secure my tall furniture. Put another way, nature added another project set to my list—because, obviously I don’t have enough projects yet. Still, this emergency preparedness project might be a bit more important than most of them—though I’d really rather not have my work tested once it’s completed…