that sucked
Today I feel like I took a sleeping pill and then had to get up far too early before it lost its effectiveness. And I did not do that; it's just that I did not get to truly restful sleeping until about 12:30ish, because some moron tripped our building's fire alarm. Shobhit later learned it was some older guy, I think in the west building, who accidentally blew his home fire extinguisher, and ironically, the smoke from that made the fire alarm go off. Apparently the fire alarm system is connected to both buildings, so even if the issue is only in one of the two buildings, it sets the alarm off for both.
It took us several minutes just to realize it was the building's fire alarm and not one of our in-unit smoke detectors. I was asleep and Shobhit was headed for bed. I might have realized sooner that it was the building, but consider that I was a little disoriented, having been woken from sleep. So, at first, I was trying to help Shobhit get the smoke detectors to turn off, and then figure out which smoke detector it actually was. It got so far as Shobhit standing on a chair in the guest room, convinced that was the one it was, except he had the battery pulled out of it completely and it was still going off. He was standing on one of the chairs from the dining table, whereas I had brought in the spare chair we keep in the bedroom, usually with the box fan set on it in the late spring and summer. I was standing on that chair, getting the building fire alarm blaring right into my ear from the wall in that room right next to where I was, when I finally told Shobhit: it isn't just us, it's the building.
So now we had to get dressed and gather the cats, preferably quickly -- in all probability it was a false alarm, but this was not something we wanted to risk. I did think later about how dangerous I suppose that could have been if there were a genuine fire in our building, the few minutes it took to get the cats into their carrier. The carrier is not immediately accessible from the master closet -- maybe I should fix that -- so I had to pull spare pillows and shirts set aside for dry cleaning from on top of it. And then, with the blaring noise, both cats were hiding under our bed, and it was a challenge getting them out from under there.
Actually, Shobhit got Shanti pretty quickly. Guru was the hard one, as he was crouched about halfway back under the bed, in the middle from either side. I have old cassette holders under there, mostly with old "talk tapes" I won't ever get rid of, which every once in a while Shobhit complains about being kept down there. He thinks I should throw them away, but that's because he is willfully insensitive to the power of sentimental value. And you know what? It would have taken me way longer to get Guru out from under there without them. At one point I was so desperate I shouted, "God damn it!" and basically shoved the cat with one of those trays, so he finally shot out from under the bed. He ran out of the bedroom and under one of the dining room chairs, and there I finally managed to pick him up. So then we put both cats at the same time into the carrier, and we had to go down the four and a half flights of stairs to get them out of the building, where a bunch of residents were standing.
When we were going down the stairwell, Shobhit was sure he smelled smoke, and there might genuinely be a fire somewhere. I thought I smelled it too. The explanation we later got turned out to be nothing of the sort, so that was odd.
And then, this part kind of astonished me: I did not see a single other carrier outside with cats in it. The situation would have to be especially dire for me to abandon my cats to a fire, but then, I bet pretty much everyone was assuming this was a false alarm -- and indeed, it was. And so far, it always has been. But what about that one time when it might not be? I do not want to get complacent about the safety of my pets. People tend to give their dogs slavish devotion as well, and I know there are countless dog owners in the complex, and yet I even saw only one dog out there, which means all other dogs had been left inside as well. Well, Shobhit and I both agreed we did the right thing after we were finally both back up inside the condo.
I felt really bad for the cats, who were huddled up in a tense bundle with each other in the back of the carrier the whole time, an unusually long time outside with the alarm continuing to go off. Luckily they seemed to get over it quite quickly once they were back inside their familiar environment with it quiet again, but it did take a while. We're lucky in situations like this in that the fire station for our district is literally one block away, so it did not take long for them to arrive. What did take long was first, getting inside the building; and second, getting the damned alarm off. Shobhit, to his credit, took his duty as a Board member seriously and helped the firefighters out, after Michael, another Board member, had gone to do something around the corner.
Shobhit later told me the firefighters were annoyed that it was difficult to retrieve a key from the safety box, but that was because our security had to be tightened after thieves broke into that box to get the key and get into our building to steal packages. Apparently the fire department was notified of this months ago and they had nothing to say about it. Maybe they will now?
Anyway, the firefighters were looking for where a switch or something was, and Shobhit led them up the east building stairwell. I did not see Shobhit again until a few minutes after I got the cats back upstairs. The alarm finally stopped and people began returning into the building -- most of them via the stairwell, because they had not yet flipped the switch to make the elevators start working again. Tense cats notwithstanding, I did not want to have to carry their combined weight of about 25 lbs up four floors on the stairs. It did not take that long for the one firefighter working on it to get the east building elevator working again, but it was long enough that I was the only resident still around on the ground floor to take it.
I opened the cat carrier just inside the door to the condo, and the cats immediately shot out of it, calming down pretty quickly thereafter. I put the battery back in the spare bedroom smoke detector and put the two chairs back in their rightful spots, got undressed, and got back into bed. Shobhit had texted me that he'd be up in a minute, and when he later got back upstairs, he told me about the "stupid old man" who had tripped the alarm -- to the guy's credit, he owned up to it, told the firefighters, and apologized. Around midnight was sure a terrible time to cause such a massive disruption, though.
Guru immediately got on the bed with us, still a little rattled, I think, and seeking comfort. I was finally asleep soon thereafter, but I was in a pretty deep sleep when my alarm went off around 5:15 this morning, having gotten well less than five hours of uninterrupted sleep. And for me, that is far from ideal. I've been unusually groggy most of the morning as a result.
Beyond that, I had the evening to myself last night, as Shobhit had a swing shift that did not end until 10 pm. I did not actually get to sleep the first time until about 11:15, and that still probably would have been fine, but had I known I would be startled out of sleep about an hour later, I would have gone out of my way to get into bed earlier. I had intended to get some photo captioning done, as I still have a ton to do for both the anniversary photo album as well as Britni and David's wedding photos. Instead, I caught up on the first two episodes of season two of Big Little Lies, which I kind of can't get enough of, especially with Meryl Streep now part of the cast. And then, I farted around online for a couple of hours, by turns listening to the new Madonna album and playing the new Taylor Swift video on repeat, an experience I have never had before with that singer.
People's cynicism about her and the song on Twitter is kind of a sight to behold -- accusing her of hijacking "the gay narrative" as a cisgender white woman, that kind of shit. I find that annoying. 90% of the population is cisgender and straight; we would be getting nowhere without them. Why not appreciate the support? God knows I do, and I say this as someone who has considered Taylor Swift wildly overrated pretty much from day one. But, I love that song; I really love that video; and if I like more of the tracks I hear, I may buy her new album for the first time just because I appreciate it so much.
It's raining today! Or this morning, anyway. I'll take what I can get. I was just talking to Noah yesterday about how Seattle's dry season is dryer and longer every year. I do love being able to ride my bike to work, which I don't do on rainy days, but I truly appreciate any and all rainy days, especially this time of year. To say we need them would be an understatement.
I just finished eating lunch and, unlike yesterday, I opted not to sit out on the patio -- it's dry now and forecast to be for the rest of the day, but it was still overcast and 61°, which is chilly enough without the sun shining. So I ate my pot pie and doughnut (god damn whoever put that box out in the kitchen!) at the main long table in the staff kitchen, hanging out with Noah and Claudia, who spent pretty much the whole time exchanging stories about their expectations with a child headed into high school next year. Nothing particularly relatable there for me, I don't have any children! A lot of it was pretty interesting stuff, though. Who the hell knew there is a high school on the 3rd floor of Seattle Center's Armory Building? I didn't, until today!
Imagine if I had any idea high school options like this even existed when I was a teenager. Granted, I was still in Spokane and therefore limited by geography alone. But still, in my world growing up, there existed only standard high schools, maybe one or two "alternative" schools for the unruly kids, and that was it. I bet anything there was more out there than I knew anything about even in the mid-nineties.
[posted 12:33 pm]