Last night, at 1:20 AM, a very loud and scary-sounding alarm began to sound in my building. I woke up, startled. My first thought: I opened a window and listened to the world outside, to see if it was part of a broader civil-defense alert (e.g. North Korea finally going off the deep end). Relieved that that didn't appear to be the case, I figured two possibilities: 99%) somebody messing around and made a mistake; 1%) an actual fire in the building. I opened my door into the corridor, and exchanged blurry glances with a neighbor guy down the hall. We shrugged. I went back in, grabbed my little "documents" box and threw it into my backpack, slipped on some shoes, grabbed my cellphone and wallet, and went down the stairs, seven floors, to the lobby of my building.
There were many people loitering around. But no evidence of fire trucks, nor was the night-watch doorman/parking-lot dude anywhere in evidence. I exchanged meaningless glances with some deeply annoyed-looking women. The night-shift man in the 24-hour convenience store off the lobby (with whom I have a "nod hello" acquaintance since he's always starting his shift when I stop in there on the way home from work to buy my bottled cold corn-tassle tea or orange juice or milk) didn't seem to be noticing the alarm at all.
The alarm stopped. I went back up the stairs, because the elevators seemed stuck on some upper floor. I stopped and peered in a few of the floors on the way back to the seventh. Nothing really going on. I went into my apartment, and put down my bag. I figured if it was a real fire, the alarm would start again, but I was also feeling stressed because it seemed likely that it could go off again, if it was the result of someone's mistake. So I stayed awake. I fired up the computer and surfed the internet, and tried to watch an episode of the Daily Show. I thought about my "emergency response" plan. I actually have one – I keep all my important documents in a plastic box which I can grab easily (as I did this time). And my laptop sleeps in my backpack, too. And I have a detachable harddrive with file backups that I can throw into it easily. I looked around my apartment, and wondered if there was anything else I'd regret hugely to lose, in an emergency. Hm… I'm kind of a pack-rat, especially with books and papers. But … I'd let go of most of it without being plunged into depression, if it had to happen. And so… whatever.
I feel like I didn't get a very good night's rest, though.
