So, David gave me a little grief about not posting about the earthquake. But in a circular reasoning way, it's his fault.

Wednesday afternoon, just after I sent him a "Happy Birthday" e-mail, knowing that it was already "tomorrow" in Ukraine, my heart, to put it as Doogie Howser would, freaked out.

For more than five minutes, my heart was beating so fast, no one trained in first aid could count the pulse. After two minutes, an ambulance was called. My heart then tried to regulate itself, speeding up and slowing down drastically, causing severe chest pains.

Now it wasn't a panic attack because I didn't have any other symptoms, no sweating, no thinking I was going to die. I was more calm than the people around me. What was annoying was feeling like an animal in a zoo. I hissed at the crowd, "Please back off, this is embarrassing as it is."

In the ambulance, the EMT's gave me two nitroglycerin pills because they could not get my heart rate under control.

"Are you under any stress?"

Ha.

The other favorite question of the day, asked by throngs of nurses and doctors at the hospital was, "Are you taking any illicit street drugs?" Even on morphine, I'm told I giggled endlessly.

In the emergency room, The Boyfriend cheered me up, cracking jokes. Poor guy returns from Iraq himself and a couple of days later he's sitting in an emergency room with his girlfriend. A young woman who was the victim of a hit-and-run that I sent someone to shoot was next to me in the hall. The woman who came from the paper made the joke that The Boyfriend could be the ultimate community journalist and go take a picture of her with his cell phone.

I was admitted overnight where I was poked and prodded. I had to do a cardio stress test at the crack of dawn. So, on Thursday, when I was released from the hospital with my heart monitor that looks like an iPod, I slept most of the day away.

So, at 4 a.m. on Friday morning, I got up to use the loo. I got back in bed, not sleepy, so I picked up the seventh Harry Potter book. Right at a part where Lord Voldemort is doing some evil, the room starts shaking. For a long time. My heart went a little a wacky, had to call it in.

"What were you doing when you pressed your heart monitor?"
"We had an earthquake."
Pause. "Seriously?"

And about 40 minutes after midnight last night, we had another quake. And tonight, Obama is in town. Sigh. I was supposed to be avoiding too much stress.