{"id":20700,"date":"2017-04-30T21:25:26","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T01:25:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/?p=20700"},"modified":"2024-04-08T13:09:35","modified_gmt":"2024-04-08T17:09:35","slug":"2024-earthquake-jersey-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/?p=20700","title":{"rendered":"2024 – Earthquake! (Jersey-style) 4-5-24"},"content":{"rendered":"

…………………………………………………<\/span>(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on April 8, 2024)<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m usually home most of the time, but not last Friday morning. The day before, my computer stopped working and my main phone was out. Since I have Optimum\u2019s Triple Play (Internet, TV and phone), I was able to make an appointment for the next day for a tech visit between 2 and 5pm, but I had to go out to my car and make that call on my cell.<\/span><\/p>\n

The next morning (Friday), I was supposed to go food shopping, but I wanted to check to see if I could get an earlier appointment. I drove 3 blocks to a parking lot that was across the street from the train station – an Optimum hotspot.<\/span><\/p>\n

The first thing I found out was that my appointment was cancelled! Some office tech equipment did a remote test on my computer, determined that I didn\u2019t need to tie up a tech\u2019s time and cancelled the appointment\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026without telling me! (Good thing I called).<\/span><\/p>\n

While I was talking to the representative, I felt what I thought was a HUGE gust of wind that seemed to slightly pick up the rear of my car\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.and then another one.<\/span><\/p>\n

The woman I was speaking with then asked me to hold on because things had suddenly gotten chaotic in her office (\u201cIt felt like an earthquake!\u201d, she said).<\/span><\/p>\n

Turns out it was and that\u2019s what the \u201cwind gusts\u201d I simultaneously felt turned out to be.<\/span><\/p>\n

After things at her office calmed down a bit, she apologized for the cancellation without notice and made a new appointment, but that day (Friday) was now all booked up, so I had to wait yet another day until Saturday between 11am and 2pm.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now I had plenty of time to go food shopping (and a later run to an Optimum store in Fair Lawn to pick up a new modem at Optimum\u2019s behest to install myself), but when I got home, my apartment looked a little different. A few CDs had fallen in my living room, as had a once-well-known group:<\/span><\/p>\n

Before and after disaster struck:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

This is exactly how the \u2018quake knocked them over from their previous positions.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In my bedroom, a picture was on the floor and a bunch of things were on the floor in the back room, where I keep a lot of collectibles.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what I initially saw on that floor:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

– A blue pillow sham from a nearby WWI military camp that covered parts of 5 towns in Bergen County from 1917 to 1919:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

No big deal\u2026\u2026..it\u2019s just cloth.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

– A small 1960s container of wooden matchsticks (without a top and easily picked up) from the first chem lab I ever worked for:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

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– An old (late 1800s) green-glass blob-top bottle for Jos. Weiler beer or soda from VERY nearby Peetzburgh, NJ – a town you never heard of that later became New Milford, NJ:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Fortunately, it stayed in one piece when it hit the carpet.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

– This is a 60-year-old, Genuine Regal China, 13.5\u201d-tall commemorative whiskey decanter for the New Jersey Tercentenary (1664-1964). The bottle was a creation of the James B. Beam Distilling Company (you may know him as \u201cJim\u201d):<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

This DID suffer slight damage in its fall. It popped its cork\/commemorative stopper after falling 6\u2019 to the carpet (you can see the stopper next to the yellow envelope in the above floor picture).<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the bottle was still corked, you could hear something inside the bottle when you gave it a shake. I had to dig out the still-stoppered cork part (the loose pieces on the left of the below pic) to free the two larger bottom pieces you see to the right (and below) the smaller loose pieces:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Thankfully, the large china bottle didn\u2019t suffer any damage, but I think<\/em> it may have caused some fatal damage to another treasured item, whose smashed pieces you can see between the pillow sham and the Tercentenary bottle in that floor picture.<\/span><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s a real shame because that was a very unique antique from around 1914 – a hand-painted \u201cSouvenir\u201d (it says) of Paterson, NJ\u2019s Great Falls (you can read another post that contains a writeup about that item here): https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/?p=6483<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And here are the before pix from that post:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After I swept it all up into a dustpan, I separated most of the painted pieces from from the bare ones and took a picture before I tossed it all:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

In the pic, you can see a roundish green blob on the left side, which you can also see on the bottom of the \u201cegg\u201d in the lower \u201cbefore\u201d pic.<\/span><\/p>\n

To me, it looks like someone took a well-chewed stick of green gum and stuck it on the bottom to keep it standing straight.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a big Great Falls fan – I\u2019ve shot them dozens of times – I\u2019m sad to lose this piece, but in a way, I\u2019m glad I wasn\u2019t there when all these things came tumbling down during what must have been a pretty violent shake of my building (the top floor gets it worst).<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So I wasn\u2019t home for the 10:23am 4.8 shake, but I WAS there for the 5:59pm 3.8 aftershock (I looked at my computer clock as it happened to make sure everyone reported it correctly later on TV\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026they did).<\/span><\/p>\n

It was a rather unnerving shake that made me REALLY glad I wasn\u2019t there for the much-stronger AM one.<\/span><\/p>\n

I might have needed a change of drawers after that one.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I know this is small potatoes when compared to what the West Coast experiences, but when it only happens once or twice in your lifetime here, the spuds get a little bigger.<\/span><\/p>\n

Look at the big deal New York City made of this. Immediately, they were printing “I Survived The New York City Earthquake” t-shirts (Hello? It was a New Jersey<\/em> earthquake).<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As for the computer, nothing changed after my modem installation, so I was glad I still had a tech appointment scheduled for the next day. It turned out that something in the modem wasn\u2019t set properly by Optimum for the phone. Fortunately, the tech had another one in his truck that worked just fine, so I’m all set.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SO – a computer\/phone disaster followed by an earthquake and now I have to go out and shoot 10% of the sun during today\u2019s eclipse.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What\u2019s next – a plague of locusts?\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…………………………………………………(ignore April 30, 2017 publish date – this was published on April 8, 2024)   I\u2019m usually home most of the time, but not last Friday morning. The day before, my computer stopped working and my main phone was out. Since I have Optimum\u2019s Triple Play (Internet, TV and phone), I was able to make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20700"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20722,"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20700\/revisions\/20722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iaintjustmusic.bobleafe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}