Fire Drill

Have you ever woken up to the fire alarm and hit your snooze button a few times before you realize that your alarm doesn’t usually go off at 3:45 in the morning? Guess how my day started!

The smoke detector was going off in the apartment next to us, but not the main building-wide alarm, so I found some pants and went down to the security desk. I could smell a hint of smoke, but what do you do? It didn’t seem like I should pull the alarm and wake everyone in the building up if some idiot just fell asleep with a cigarette lit in an ashtray or something. The security guy came and tried banging on the door and whatnot, and I went back into our apartment. A couple minutes later, I heard a fire truck heading our way, then a bunch of firemen in the hallway.

When I popped my head out the front door, they had gotten into the apartment and one of them was saying something about food on the stove, so I figured they’re here, it’s just food on the stove – it’s probably safe to go back to bed.

That’s when the building-wide alarm went off. I dragged Erin’s ass out of bed, pulled on proper pants, and started tossing laptops in bags – I’m not taking any chances. By this time, the hallway was full of smoke, so then I REALLY started to worry. But we only got down a flight of stairs before the alarm turned off, so I guess they set it off by accident.

And then, of course, Erin and I were checking out the firemen. “Did you see the butt on the guy in the helmet? Ohmigod! What about the one with the mustache?!”

Until a minute ago, the firefighters were clunking around in the hallway and the apartment next door, but I guess they got everything checked out and the alarms reset and stuff. I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to sleep for a bit anyway – and of course, now the guys next door are arguing over who set off the alarm, so that helps.