My First Earthquake Experience - I Just Had It, 5.9

I was sitting at my computer and hear suddenly a rattling of the window with the locked gate because it is on the fire escape. My internal processor goes, "Rain? Sun is shining, but not impossible." The floor and chair start rocking. Internal processor goes, "Earthquake. They've finally screwed up the ground here enough putting all these skyscrapers in our neighborhood that doesn't have rock that we can feel earthquakes." At the moment Lenny Lopate who is interviewing someone from California on his WNYC sgiw says, "I believe we've just experienced an earthquake judging by the shaking of my chair." Confirmed immediately.

It was centered in Virigina, tremors up through D.C. and NYC. Between hurricane and earthquake. Previously this month it was between fire and flood. The relentless tenth anniversary of 9/11 drumbeat pounding. No wonder my nerves are what they are.
No cell phone -- out everywhere down here. I'm feeling sick.

ETA: Things are normal here.  No damage or injuries, merely warnings to be prepared for aftershocks.

But in C'town there was a lot of 'minor' damage -- my friends' china cabinets emptied and they've lost a lot of that kind of thing -- most of which is heirlooms, so I don't regard this as minor at all.  At the same time they've been working to get ready for Hurricane Irene.  This is where they were dining at the Fish and Whistle at the end of spring and watched a tornado whirl right down the Chester River while dining on the deck which is on the river.  Texas friends are wishing Irene was coming to them instead up the Atlantic coast because they are so parched, "We'll take a hurricane if it will bring us rain."