More DC adventures

So last week there was an earthquake in DC which was basically the first earthquake in recorded DC history. It was all of 3.6, and I totally slept through it. I definitely picked the best year ever to move to DC.

Later that day I went to work, as one does. I came back to my office from a meeting to discover a couple of emails from our office manager: the first, saying there was a suspicious package investigation going on outside the building and a corner was blocked off. The second email informed us that the investigation had now been upgraded to a bomb threat, and several blocks were now blocked off, and the bomb squad had been called in. Cue nervous conversation around the office. Shortly thereafter, a Very Serious voice came over the intercom and announced that we all needed to move away from the windows and not stand on a particular side of the building. Of course, my office is on that side of the building AND has windows. So I headed over to the other side of the office to see what my colleagues were up to--lots of quite nervous conversation, and looking out the interior windows into the lobby to try to figure out what was going on. We watched some officials come into the lobby and shoo people away from the doors. A security guard was stationed in front of the doors to prevent people from leaving. At one point he went out to the street to see what was going on and then came running back in--not something to inspire confidence. Another announcement over the intercom to inform us the basement parking garage was now on lockdown. My coworker called a friend over at Homeland Security to try to find out what was going on. This went on for, literally, an hour. Meanwhile we're hearing that all the neighboring buildings were being evacuated.

And, the anticlimax: another announcement over the intercom to inform us that all was well and it was not a bomb. We found out later that it was a briefcase full of "electronic testing equipment", whatever that is. In any case--certainly a more dramatic Thursday afternoon than I'm used to!