An Evening of Mini- "Disasters": Man Made and Natural

This past Tuesday evening, I had the missionaries over to our house for dinner, and I feel bad for them because it was pretty much a struggle. William had a meeting that went late at work, so they had to wait outside before he came home. Then, we sat down to dinner and I dished up some of the casserole I had made. My friend had made it before and it was really good, so this was my first time attempting it, and it did not turn out like I had remembered. It was edible, but not very flavorful. The same with the dessert- a different friend had made it and I remember really liking it, but when I did it myself, it was just ok. Basically, the whole meal wasn't super tasty for the Elders- with the exception of the whipped cream and the Halloween candy we gave them. Even the punch wasn't very good- it was the Target brand of "Raspberry Lemonade" and sometimes its ok to go with a generic, but not so much with this. It was so tart and really didn't even taste like raspberry or even lemonade. Just slightly flavored water. Not only was the food only "ok", but then me, in all of my graciousness and elegance, spill some of the casserole on William (fortunately, it wasn't the Elders- that really would have been embarrassing!) So, I then turn to get a rag to wipe it up, when I then tip over the full Brita water pitcher onto the carpet (again, fortunately it wasn't the punch). And then the Elders were super quiet- it seemed that no question we asked them engendered any kind of a response.

I just laughed and laughed after they left because I felt so bad that they had to endure my crazy not so elegant hosting skills and they didn't even get super good food either. Even after they left, William kindly told me that we should probably never make it again since it was pretty bland. This just goes to show you, don't attempt to make a meal for others that you personally haven't yet made- the possibility for slightly disastrous results is greatly enhanced.

We then went out to try to find a Halloween costume with minorly successful results after going to a 3rd store (another piece of advice- don't try finding a costume the night before Halloween at Target- you have slightly better odds at Walmart, but not much.) Fortunately, one of the 15 "Halloween Headquarters" within a 20 mile radius of us had what we were looking for. But, it was looking fairly grim for awhile.

So I would classify all of the above events as being "man-made" mini-disasters, but the evening would not be complete without an actual natural "mini" disaster. I noticed that there was this shaking of the floor and rumbling from the upstairs apartment and so I commented to William- "Geeze, I think that our upstairs neighbors are doing aerobics" and William replied- "Welcome to your first earthquake" and then I noticed that the floor was also slightly moving. It went on for only about maybe 15 seconds and while things moved, nothing was knocked over or broken. I experienced the first earthquake that I can remember- Welcome to California. We immediately checked the Internet to find out about it and minutes after, the US Geological System noted that there had been some "activity" but it was crazy to see that 1 and 2 minutes afterwards, over 12 people had blogged about it! Wow- some are really fast. It turned out it was a 5.6 on the Richter scale but to me that seems a little more extreme than it actually was. The scariest thing about it was just how it completely happened without warning. And so, a big one that was a lot worse could have easily happened. I was just happy that I had followed the advice of the First Presidency and our ward to have some water and some food storage on hand so that if the earthquake would have been bigger, we would have at least been alright for about a week or longer. Crazy h0w things could have been drastically different in under a minute. I just feel so blessed that it wasn't a big one and that everything was ok.

To be quite honest, I don't feel that these events were really all that "disastrous"- they were inconvenient, slightly embarrassing, and slightly scary, but I realize that they could have been a lot worse. I truly feel grateful that this was the extent of my "disasters" for the evening, because I know a great many other individuals are truly suffering from natural and man-made disasters much, much more terrible than I could ever fathom. My complete respect goes out to you all.