On Monday and Tuesday this week, I knew I had to do all of my prep work for my NYC trip. I was leaving on the red-eye on Tuesday so I knew I had most of that day to get things done, but I didn’t want to leave everything to the last-minute.
My plan was to wake up on Monday and do most of my trip packing. On a daily basis, my alarm is set for 7am (yes, even while I’m unemployed). On Monday, I woke up at 6:24am (I know the exact time because I looked at my phone) and was mad because I wanted to go back to sleep and get in that last half hour. But a minute after I woke up, a 4.4 earthquake hit Los Angeles.
While a 4.4 isn’t too big of an earthquake, when it starts, you have no idea how big it will get. The first jolt was pretty big and the rumbling was very loud. Turns out, the epicenter was pretty close to me.
As soon as the shaking stopped, I got out of bed and went over to my living room to watch the news. I also got on my computer and sent a quick email to my parents to let them know that I was ok (I didn’t want them to see it on their news and not have heard from me). Since it was a smaller quake, there really wasn’t a lot of damage. In my house, one wineglass broke. That’s it.
After watching the news for a bit to see that it wasn’t a big quake somewhere and that everything was ok, I decided to start my day (I forgot to turn off my alarm and it went off a few minutes after I turned off the news).
I got all my packing done. It was tough because I’m only bringing a carry on and the weather is supposed to be highs in the mid 50’s and lows in the 20’s. That’s a lot of variety. But fortunately, I got some travel storage bags so I could make my sweaters and bulky jacket take up less room in my suitcase. I managed to get everything in there that I needed to bring.
On Tuesday, I kept my schedule pretty open so I could try to prevent some stress about flying. All I really did was go over to my friend Erin’s house because she was going to blow out and style my hair for me.
Other than that, I tried to stay calm and get ready for my red-eye flight that night.
I’ll admit that I’m writing this post before my flight, so I’ll have to share my experience with that on another post.
Next time, I’ll be writing from NYC!