Fire!

I'm standing outside in a gray, drizzly rain. It's 5:40 AM on Friday morning, and I just ran down 20 flights of stairs after grabbing a cardigan (I don't like being cold) and my phone (I have to call the building's 24 hour number). It's not even close to the time I have to be up, and I just went to bed 3 hours ago.

The fire alarm went off wildly at 5:3-something this morning and forced me and Stu out of bed to look around and wonder what the hell was going on. I grabbed my phone, a sweater, ran around searching for my flip flops which are supposed to be my most accessible pair of footwear, and Stu and I started making our way down the short flights - 20 of them. Stu was super calm as usual, like the time we were bobbing in fjord water thousands of feet deep after being rudely ejected upside down out of a kayak {entry in my other blog!}. He said, "it's okay" in an even tone several times, making me wonder if it was more for himself than for me.

One Chinese guy was wildly running back and forth from the lobby to a storage space outside where the controls for the alarm was located. Another Filipino guy was bringing out one umbrella. We were the only guests of our serviced apartment building standing outside. I swore to Stu that I had seen other tenants the other day. Hmm, maybe they were just visiting the apartments. Fifteen minutes passed, and still no sign of a fire truck. Not good.

The Chinese guy said it was a false alarm (something about the rain triggering the alarm somehow), but the alarm was still ringing insistently. There was no sign of fire or smoke so Stu and I went back up.

So sleepy. Too much excitement for one day. Must give more thought to building's safety codes later when I'm more awake...