Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Unless...

you were awakened by fire alarms just after 3AM, walked down over 20 flights of outdoor stairs to the cold Seattle street, waited for an hour to get back in the building, then stood in a lobby for another 30 minutes to get an elevator back to a smoky floor,

I believe my morning has been worse than yours.

I was cold, headachy and annoyed. It's scary and disorienting to walk down that many stairs - I got dizzy and shaky. Which leads many people to thoughts they'd rather not consider as they attempt to remain calm when leaving a building.

We did well though - a hotel filled with many upper-level scientists (I'm not including myself there - I'm tired, not overly arrogant). We evacuated within 5 minutes, many of us (again, not me!) carrying laptops protectively (I took my pretty pink purse). So I've taken Advil and sipped some water, and will now attempt to sleep again.

Comments of sympathy are encouraged, but not required. It could have been much worse, right?

3 comments:

post-doc said...

Please keep in mind I am 2 hours behind my date/time stamp. It's nearing 4:30 here, not 6:30. Do you feel sorry for me yet? :)

ceresina said...

I just love your comments to us.
And I'm happy to leave a comment of sympathy. My night was poor (too much caffeine leading to a fall-asleep-time of three hours too late), but it definitely did not involve fire alarms, dizzy-making stairs, and having to remember a pretty pink purse while in a fog. It could have been much worse, but that doesn't mean it was good.
I hope you have a better day.

Anonymous said...

I was at a conference once and we stayed in a brand new Aramark hotel, just opened 2 weeks prior to the conference. Anyway, they had major problems with their fire alarm, and for three nights in a row, and twice in one night, we had to evacuate from our 17th floor room thru the kitchen around 3-4AM.

So you have both my sympathy and my empathy.

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