I’ve never posted from work before, but these are exigent circumstances. I’m on the 84th floor of the Sears Tower (aka “Willis Tower”) and it’s an extremely windy day in Chicago. The building is creaking like a ship on the high seas, and I can occasionally feel slight movement.
I know that the building is engineered to act like this, and it’s necessary to disperse the energy of the wind and yadda yadda yadda. But deep in my id, something is uncomfortable being 900 feet up and swaying like a tree branch.
I’m glad I’m on the 5th floor of my office building, because when I go up to the upper floors (+15 and up) I can feel the sway and I get motion sickness.
In my old three-family house I could sometimes see a glass of water do the Jurassic Park thing. Wind? Probably not on the 3rd floor. Subway? That was several blocks away. Earthquake? Very unlikely.
There was a building I worked at in Ottawa with a gym on the top floor. Every day at lunch when the aerobics class started you could watch see the sway of the building by watching the windows across the road. I used to have to leave the building for lunch in order to be able to eat.
I’m reasonably high up and the other thing we get on windy days is a scraping sound in the elevator – the vented elevator shafts are having a similar pressure ebb and flow which bounces the cables against the cars. A bit unnerving at first.