Friday night rumble

Last Friday was opening night for the Montreal Canadiens. We stayed in to watch the match, because we're boring old people it seems. Sadly, the Habs lost to Buffalo in a shootout. The shootout was boring, but the match was pretty intense. This being the 100th anniversary of the team, people are already buzzing about their chances for the cup. I always kid with my students that the Flames will take the cup this year, but everyone knows that won't happen...

After the game, we were crying into our beers and looking for televised entertainment to cheer us up. All of a sudden, there was a loud crashing sound, and the whole building shook. We thought a truck must have rammed into the side of the building. And being downtown, that isn't entirely out of the realm of possibility. So we checked outside -- nothing. We went downstairs to see if the building (it is 100 years old this year after all) had suffered any damages. Nothing. The neighbors were all outside too -- they had felt the same thing. The local consensus was that since there was no truck sticking out of the side of any of the buildings on the street, it must have been an underground explosion. Nothing. No smell of gas (thankfully), no accidents (ditto), nothing. There were calls to 911, the gas company, everywhere. Nobody knew what was going on. It was, incidentally, a great way to meet the neighbors.

It turned out that it was not such a localized phenomenon. People all over town had heard a crash and felt the earth move. And in fact, it was just that! Yep, right here in 3R, we had a mini tremor! It was something wussy like 2.3 on the Richter scale -- just enough to freak people out, not enough to do any damage.

And I thought that by no longer living on the west coast or in Japan, I was safe from earthquakes!