Morning, readers. Let us celebrate the fact that Friday is upon us.

That wasn’t a rumble in your stomach this morning: That was an earthquake. The 3.6 magnitude quake struck at 5:04 a.m., and its epicenter was in the Germantown-Gaithersburg area. The quake was the largest to hit the area since the U.S. Geological Survey created a database to record such activity in 1974. Folks from as far away as New York and Georgia reported the quake to the USGS.

As if traveling isn’t inherently stressful enough. A power outage yesterday at Reagan National Airport, caused by a fire at an electrical substation near the headquarters of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, delayed 20 percent of flights at the airport for most of the day. It’s the third power outage at Reagan this year.

Homicides in D.C. in 2009 dropped by nearly 25 percent from 2008. The District experienced a reduction of all violent crime, a trend the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments attributes to new technology and better inter-jurisdiction sharing of information. Whadayathink the chances are that Fenty is going to try to use this to his advantage in his re-election bid?

Bad news for those of you looking forward to seeing ‘Dreamgirls’ at the National Theatre in two weeks: Producers have canceled the D.C. leg of the tour due to disappointing ticket sales. The production, which opened at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem last November, is still slated to make stops in San Francisco, Memphis, and Miami through the end of the year.

Photo: washington.edu