Aww, Tamex, that’s a sweet story! Oh, and with regards to the last one, apparently it may have been caused by people intentionally leaving the showers running hot on one of the floors. That’s what a resident of one of the other houses said theirs was caused by. I don’t know about this one, there were hardly any people in the house tonight so I don’t know why someone would bother playing a prank, although it is the weekend and there is much drinking going on, of course.
And let me be the first to say “Awha? hazumumbawhaalahuh? Zzzzzzzz…”
Last December I was at a conference in D.C. when we all got roused out of bed at 2AM for a real fire (some asshole had set fire to a sofa near an elevator). The fire department pumped so much water it was draining from the fifth floor and leaking out of fixtures in the lobby. The worst part is that this is the conference where job interviews in my field are conducted, so a whole bunch of neurotic grad students, after being chucked outside in the cold for 2 hours (and some returning to rooms that were uninhabitable because of being ankle-deep in water) had to do job interviews the next day.
Oh, what a night. So, two hours after the last fire alarm (12:30AM), I log off my computer and settle in to my bed. Not ten minutes later I’m roused from my near-slumber by the dulcet tones of ANOTHER fire alarm. Now, with the last one, we were outside for maybe 5 minutes before we were allowed back inside. (The fire station is about 10 feet away from the school, so the fire marshall always gets there before everyone is even outside) So, we all troop out onto the dew-covered grass, fully expecting to be inside and warm again within a few minutes. Except the alarm wasn’t stopping. It would go quiet for a few seconds and we’d all prepare to walk back toward the building only to be met with the sound of the alarm going off again.
After a half hour or so of this, the residence don (who is LIVID) comes out and asks if anyone let a non-resident in. Nobody volunteers anything, although I suspect they were covering for a friend or just didn’t want to look like a rat. Art (the don) then informs us that we can’t go back inside because whoever pulled the fire alarm pulled it hard enough to break it, leaving it stuck on. The only way to make the alarm stop ringing was to disable it, so in the event of an actual fire that night the alarm wouldn’t go off and we’d all burn to death. A boy next to me muttered “At least we’d be warm…” So, we were told we had to stay outside until the alarm got fixed. Lemme tell you, 3:00AM in Nova Scotia after a hard rain in mid-October is really, really uncomfortable, especially when you’re wearing pyjamas and flip-flops. (Although the boys who somehow got pizza delivered to them seemed pretty happy)
So we wait. And we wait. And we wait some more. Finally, Art tells us that since it was going to be awhile before it could be fixed, we could all go sit in the basement lounge area of one of the other residences. We gratefully make our way over to the blissfully warm building and settle in. Of course, all of the couches are immediately taken, and the carpeted floor in front of them, so I and two people I made friends with sat against the wall by the radiators, trying to get warm. It didn’t really work, since hard institutional tile flooring doesn’t exactly warm up. It was impossible to get to sleep with my tailbone crying out in pain at me, so my friend and I passed the time laughing at stuff that is only funny when you’re sleep-deprived. At some point, some douchebag accidentally opened one of the emergency exit doors, setting off ANOTHER alarm that rang for several minutes until Art and the fire marshall arrived to turn it off. Even though there’s supposed to be a fine for opening those doors (which are clearly marked as alarmed emergency only doors), Art didn’t really seem to care.
So, we sat down in the basement for awhile longer, half-asleep and wishing for out beds. Finally, an RA came down the stairs and informed us we could go back to our residence. We all stumbled back over and said goodnight, with one girl telling me “No offense, but I really hope I don’t see you again tonight.” I assured her I felt the same and went back to my room. The time? 4:21AM. I resolved to sleep in until at least 4:21 the next afternoon.
As luck would have it, my mother called me at 10:30. head bashes against wall