Not my fault!

How not to enjoy a sunny respite from the monsoons of the last few days, an afternoon when even the volatility of the markets was swelling the longs's sails and blowing headwinds into Midas'? But a sudden sensation as if dizziness or involuntary muscle twitching dragged my reality back in check. The most natural explanation was an earthquake. I had actually experienced similar and bigger tremors in Rome, Italy. In the evening of November 23, 1980 (my birthday!), one of the deadliest quakes in Italian history was a frightful experience on the 7th floor where I was living. There were a few more. But this is NYC, not in a seismic region! Had someone badly messed up at one of the nearby construction sites? Or was this the ultimate terrorist attack? (Been seeing too much sci-fi...)
Soon the radio announced it had indeed been a seismic tremor. A modicum of chaos in a region utterly unaccustomed to this force of nature ensued. The epicenter was soon located somewhere in Louisa County, VA, near Mineral. Geologists commented that this was the work of a ancient fault, the remnant of the geological heydays of hundreds of millions years ago when the Appalachian rose, the so called Spotsylvania fault. Admittedly, today was my 3/4 birthday, but not my fault!