a 5.2 at 4:37am

Having never experienced an actual earthquake before it was a little unsettling (no pun intended) to wake up at 4:37 this morning because the entire house we are staying in was shaking.  Due to my lack of experience and the sleepiness affecting my thinking I could not for the life of me figure what was going on.  I thought, "Did a tree fall on the house or was it hit by a car?" but when the house continued rattling and shaking away for 20 to 30 seconds I realized that neither of those were viable options (had I not been half asleep I would have realized they weren't viable options to begin with since the house is positioned in such a way that no car could hit it with any significant force and there are no large trees near it either).  It wasn't until Brooke said, "Hey, I think that was an earthquake." that I finally was able to acknowledge that as a possibility.  Sure enough she was right.  There was an earthquake registering about 5.2 on the Richter Scale 130 miles east of St. Louis.  You can read more about it here.  Now I have a new experience to add to the list.  Just F.Y.I., apparently an earthquake of this magnitude releases an amount of energy roughly equivalent to the atomic bomb detonated over Nagasaki at the end of WWII.