From Pennies To Yennies

Well, Dan and I thought we got off pretty lucky with just some papers knocked over after March 11th’s earthquake. The earthquake hit, we stayed in town for another few days, then headed back to Portland/ Seattle for three weeks. In those few days, neither of us opened our glass cabinet above the sink.

Now, Dan and I own a lot of glasses. We enjoy collecting pint glasses from breweries we tour or favored restaurants, and we’ve developed a habit of picking up a shot glass from places we’ve been. When we were packing to move to Japan, Dan instructed the movers to pack about a dozen glasses, and maybe a dozen shot glasses as well. Well, the movers didn’t really pay attention, and packed about 60 of them. So we kinda stacked them up in the cabinet above our sink.

The other day I was tidying up the house and I noticed a glass in our drying rack from weeks ago that was cleaned and never put away. I opened the cabinet (for the first time since the earthquake) and was caught in the downpour of broken glass, shot glasses, and a couple pint glasses. It was never ending! It scared Penny so much that she took to hiding under our bed for an hour. After a couple seconds I jumped out of the way and just watched as glass poured over my kitchen. When it ended there were shards of glass everywhere.


Shot glasses precariously tipped over. Notice the left cabinet is held ajar by a Jack Skellington shot glass. By the time I finally got the nerve to move it about 7-8 more shot glasses fell out.

I should mention, I’m ok! I got some small cuts on my hands and arms, but I was able to rinse and Neosporin them. Then I sent to the neverending task of cleaning. Picking up, sweeping, vacuuming, some of the glasses shattered into simply glass dust! It was painstaking, but I wanted to make sure everything was cleaned up, especially with little Penny underfoot.

After about 2 hours I was satisfied for the most part. There’s some glass dust behind the oven I need Dan to move so I can clean up. But there you have it. That earthquake knocked over our papers, spilled some perfume, and wreaked havoc on our glass cabinet.