I sleep on the couch last night. The reason? After shutting down the ol’ laptop and blearily enjoying an episode of Red Dwarf, I stumble into the bedroom to discover that all my clean laundry is on the bed. It’s easier to just crash in the living room.

At 3:30 AM I wake up, heart pounding. I just had a vivid and disturbing earthquake dream. I have them occasionally. This one was intense. And I think my heart is pounding because the last time I had an earthquake dream there was a real-world correlation. In that dream, I’m in a brick house. It’s the home of Maryann’s parents, who live in Indiana. There’s some kind of barbecue in progress outside. I’m a guest, and I’ve taken the liberty of exploring the house. As I’m looking around, I think, “This would be a bad place to be in an earthquake.” And then of course, an earthquake strikes. I run to the doorjamb, but because I recently read that doorways are no longer the safest place to cool your heels in an earthquake, I run all the way outside. I turn around just in time to see the entire brick structure to slump into a shapeless pile of brick. Had I stayed in there I would have been ground to a fine paste.

The next day i tell Maryann about the dream. This is my friend and coworker Maryann, whom I’m convinced has an unusually acute third eye. She stares at me, amazed, and says that the night before she and Cynthia were looking through Indiana real estate listings. They see a nice house at a nice price but Cynthia says, “Oh, but we can’t live there.”

“Why not?” asks Maryann.

“Because it’s a brick house. What if there’s an earthquake?”

Maryann just laughs. “There ARE no earthquakes in Indiana.”

And that’s not all. Earlier that same day, Maryann had seen a book on the cover of which was a photo of a house that had slid off its foundation. She had taken a photo of the house, cropping it so that it didn’t look like a second generation photo and sent it to a friend with a message that read, “Look, my parents’ house collapsed.”

Now I’m not saying that I’m Nostradamus, but it’s just too strange to be called a coincidence. And Maryann’s no stranger to having a precognition or premonition. A couple weeks ago she was looking for a spot to park near her apartment. It was late at night. She found a spot close by but this thought flashed through her mind: “I can’t park there. My car will get hit.” And even though she understood perfectly well that the thought had no rational basis, she chose a parking spot much farther away, right next to a shadowy park.

The next morning, guess what? As Maryann leaves to go get her car she sees that the car that had parked there has been hit by another driver, and all the involved parties are gathered in a knot, hashing out the details.

Anyway, all of this is going through my head at 3:30 this morning as I shake the sleep from my mind. The dream was so vivid–the collapsing hillsides, the dust lifting from the roads and the crumbling dirt and brick houses (I was in some kind of jungle canyon.) Finally, I let it drift and fell back asleep.

So this morning, I get up and switch on KPCC. This is the story they’re telling.

Magnitude 6.4 quake hits off Peru coast

A 6.4-magnitude earthquake has hit near the coast of central Peru, shaking three cities and causing some light damage but no injuries were reported, Peru’s Geophysical Institute said.

The quake struck at 5:48am (local time) with an epicentre 90 kilometres north-west of the city of Pisco, at a depth of 43 kilometres. The US Geological Survey reported the quake was of a 6.5 magnitude at a depth of 33 kilometres.

“Some light damage to houses in Pisco has been reported but there are no deaths or injuries,” institute director Hernando Tavera said. The quake could also be felt in the capital Lima and the city of Camana.

Look at the time. 5:48 AM in Peru is 3:48 AM in Los Angeles. Maybe I AM Nostradamus.