Steve Austin Who?

Last night when I went to bed, Jeff had already been sleeping for about an hour, dreaming about who knows what, when this interesting dialogue took place:

Jeff: Hello, Steve Austin. Are you ready to play dead so I can bury you?
Me: Umm...yeah.
Jeff: C'mon, I'm gonna bury you.
Me: Why do you want to bury me?
Jeff: I don't know. So I can get some new stuff.
Jeff: [Siiiiiiiiigh] I'm SOOOOO tired.

What I was wondering, among other things, was Steve Austin who? As in Stone Cold Steve Austin? Or Steve Austin, as played by Lee Majors in The Six Million Dollar Man? I also wondered why he thought burying Steve Austin or ME would result in new stuff. I wondered if it had anything to do with our discussion of life insurance options for me that we had had last night. Maybe he really was plotting to bury me so he could buy a new truck with Buckshot Mudders.

Luckily there were no more disturbances from that side of the bed for the remainder of the twilight hours. And I awoke alive. To an earthquake.

By now, surely most people have heard that a 5.4 magnitude earthquake shook the Midwest just before 6:00 this morning. I was actually in a semi-awake state, but fading in and out of consciousness as I anticipated the sound of my alarm. I first heard the shower door begin to rattle a little. Then a little more. And then the bed shook a little too. My first thought was that it was Jeff trying to wake me without startling me too badly as I have a tendency to rise up in terror if he tries to rouse me from sleep with traditionally normal methods. Or was he trying to KILL me so he could get new stuff? It lasted 10 seconds at the most. Once I was awake, I was certain it had been an earthquake.

I came downstairs straightaway to find that Jeff hadn't left for work yet. He had felt the couch shaking too. I inquired about which Steve Austin. Though he did not recall having any such conversation, he was pretty sure he would have been talking about The Six Million Dollar Man, not Stone Cold.

And sure enough, the lead story on the Today Show was the earthquake that had rocked the Midwest.

"The walls was shakin'...the earth was quakin'...my mind was achin'...and who the heck is Steve Austin?"