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I'm a guy!!!!
yeah...ok
I always thought I'd much prefer to have been stuck with the Eastern states, but it wasn't even presented as an alternative. I suppose the Appalachians are generally considered the dividing line, and Ohio is west of them.
A 5.0 magnitude earthquake hit near the Canadian capital of Ottawa this afternoon, and people in the Chicago area reported feeling tremors from it.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake hit about 10 miles underground at about 12:40 p.m. central time. Ottawa is about 800 miles northeast of Chicago.
Rich Bragg, a USGS geologist, said it's not surprising that the earthquake was felt as far away as Chicago. The earth's crust in the eastern part of the continent is particularly thick and strong, meaning that quakes there are usually felt over a larger area than those of comparable magnitude west of the Rocky Mountains, where the crust is not as rigid.
The difference between crusts in the respective areas, he said, could be compared to the difference between steel and wax.
"If you smack a piece of steel with a hammer, it rings," he said.
Around the Chicago area, residents who felt the quake couldn't tell at first what they were feeling.
Catherine White was sitting on a sofa reading a newspaper in her third-floor apartment near Montrose and Lake Shore Drive this afternoon when she felt the sofa shake.
White's mother Vicki Quade, sitting about 10 feet away at a computer, also felt a tremor.
"I thought at first that it was the neighbors running or something, but it was too much for that. Too powerful,'' said White, 18. "You could see the newspaper moving. It was weird. It was strange."
Quade and her daughter -- who believe their building is on a fault line -- said they felt the tremor at about 12:50 p.m.
"It's a long 12 to 15 seconds," Quade said.
Quade's daughter asked her, "Mom, do you feel that? The sofa is shaking...as she was reading, her paper was going up and down," said Quade. "Then within a few seconds I could feel it... My chair at the computer started to literally shake."
She said even her teeth rattled.
The faraway quake had at least one Evanston resident shaking in his seat.
Ushane Locke, an intern with the city of Evanston, said he was sitting at his desk in the Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center this afternoon when his body started shaking.
Locke called the shaking "minor," and said it lasted no more than 30 seconds.
"It was nothing too dramatic," he said. "I just thought it was an aftershock. I remember the earthquake last year, so I knew the feeling."
Locke said one of his bosses also felt the quake.
Evanston fire officials said they received no reports of damage or effects from the quake.
Lynn and Ken Kizer were driving north on Indiana Highway 49, a few miles north of Valparaiso on their way to Michigan City when they felt a tremor. She said it "came and gone" and lasted only a few seconds.
"He turned to me and says, 'Boy, I just had a wave of dizziness," said Lynn Kizer, 64, of Kouts, Ind. "I had felt it like a little bit earlier, but never said anything."
She said there were very few other vehicles on the road at the time.
Here's what others are saying:
Chicago: I work at UIC and felt the earthquake. It was eerie and so subtle I thought perhaps I was imagining it or had really overdone the coffee. I asked a friend in the office next to mine if she had felt it and I posed the possibility of an earthquake. She felt nothing and suggested it may have been a passing truck or the el, but those are always accompanied by a lot of racket. She also suggested I was crazy. I was delighted to have my sanity confirmed by the Trib.
West Lafayette, Ind.: Here on the 6th floor of a building at Purdue University, many of us felt a rocking motion for about 7 seconds. My chair started to rock back and forth like ripples in water and I also felt the rocking through my arm rest. My eyes had difficulty focusing on my computer screen.
Chicago: After 7 years in California, this is what I posted as my facebook status at 12:50:
"Were I in California, I'd swear that shaking I felt just now was an earthquake. Since I'm in Illinois, I'll blame the backhoe in front of the building." Guess I was right the first time 
Louisville, Ky.: I'm in Louisville, Kentucky and I swear I felt our building move. I'm on the 4th floor of an old jail building. Anyone else this far south feel anything?
Chicago: I was laying on the couch and felt some vibration. At first I thought it was just me, but then I looked over at the plant and it was shaking to. I posted a comment on Facebook to see if it was just me or if someone else had felt what I did.
Chicago: Sitting at my desk typing, thought nearby construction was shaking building until I realized it was a repetitive back and forth shaking, slow about a half second each way. Like the one from a year or so ago at night.
Rochester, NY: I am an Oak Park resident and I am working in Rochester NY, this week.
We felt the building shake for at least five seconds. I work across from someone who lives in California and they didn't seem too worried. Then management evacuated the building for about 10 minutes as a precautionary measure. He guessed 5.2 or 5.3 which based on the distance from the epicenter of the quake was probably accurate. I distinctly remember two or three other quakes in Illinois and another in California. This was much more pronounced. Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and we universally understood that is was a quake. No damage that I could tell, but all objects in the room obviously moving.
