I am an Iowan, born and bred. I’ve survived miserable winters and sweltering summers (some without air conditioning). I walked five miles to school uphill both ways in 10 feet of snow.

Okay, not really. I only lived one mile away from school.

But I am from Iowa. And I always assured my friends on the East Coast that I was capable of weathering all four seasons. I’m not sure if the Gods are unhappy about my return to the Greatest State in the Union or if I’ve lost my meteorological immunity, but Mother Nature has been nothing but ridiculous since I moved to Iowa City in May 2007.

Summers in Iowa are always hot. Fine. What is the State Fair without unbearable heat and humidity with a side of mullets and fried-everything on a stick? Winter - cold, snowy, icy, snowy, cold, icy, snowy … this year it got to be a bit much. Fine. It had been a while since I endured a true Iowa Winter. Spring so far has been a bit rainy for my taste, but no one likes being locked inside BLB on a beautiful day, so perhaps it’s all for the better. I’m taking this all in stride, trying to be the optimist.

April 18, 2008, 4:39 AM (my alarm clock is a few minutes fast, don’t hold me to scientific accuracy). My eyes pop open; my bed is shaking. I hear my closet doors shaking. The shaking lasts for a while, 10 seconds or so. I can’t figure out what it is. It makes me mad, though, because I was having a good dream. My half-asleep mind cannot come up with a reasonable explanation. There is no such thing as an earthquake in Iowa.

7:15 AM: I’m getting ready to head to school, already having decided not to tell anyone about being woken up my mysterious tremors. I don’t even know if what I felt was real; I might be going crazy. Law school has that effect on people. There’s no HawkAlert, everything is still on the shelves … trees are still in the ground. Definitely going crazy. Out of curiosity (/insanity), I check kcrg.com and the headline blares

BREAKING NEWS: EARTHQUAKE FELT IN ILLINOIS; TREMORS FELT AS FAR AWAY AS INDIANA, OHIO, TWIN CITIES

I’m not nuts. I’m a survivor!

This got me thinking about all the natural “disasters” I’ve survived: blizzards, ice storms, droughts, tornadoes, Noreasters, the Great Flood of 1993 (I wish I still had the t-shirt), September 11 (obviously not natural but harrowing to say the least, as I was living in DC), Hurricane Isabel in 2003, and now, an earthquake. I’ve still got tsunamis and avalanches to go.

What have you survived? Any fun tales? Did you sleep through the tremors like everyone else but me?