That was the view from our backyard this morning. I’ll admit that it’s not quite as impressive as the massive displays of color in the Hudson Valley, but it was a whole lot easier to get to.

We spent the morning running errands, finishing at our favorite grocery store, Lunardi’s. We were walking back to the car with our purchases when suddenly, my watch unexpectedly tapped me on the wrist. I raised my hand to see what was up, and saw this:

A few seconds later, both of our phones sounded the Emergency Alert and notified us that there had been a quake. We weren’t near anything that could fall on us, so we just stayed where we were for a couple of minutes before deciding that the danger had passed. We didn’t feel, hear, or see anything, though friends a mile away felt the shaking very distinctly.

Nothing was amiss when we got home, and reports indicate there was no significant damage from the quake anywhere in the area. That’s my favorite kind of earthquake!

I wrote and posted yesterday’s entry before we got on the plane because I had the strong feeling I’d be too tired to do it when we got home, and I was right.

We boarded the plane on time, but then we had to wait for our First Officer to arrive, about half-an-hour after boarding was complete. That seemed curious.

After dinner, I was talking with one of the flight attendants and found out what had happened. The crew that was supposed to be working the flight was stuck somewhere, so Delta operations had to assemble a new crew. All of them except the First Officer were already in New York; the First Officer had to fly to JFK, hence the delay.

They made up the extra half-hour in the air, but it was still well after 10pm Pacific by the time we got home, and we didn’t unpack everything until today.

It could have been worse, though. The JFK-SFO flight on Saturday was diverted to Minneapolis! Maybe that’s where the crew was….