4 days with no posts...

Huh. This is the longest stretch I've gone without posting I think.
There was gonna be a really cool post a couple of days ago. It was going to have video and everything and I would have looked so just wicked brilliant.

Here's the story. When I came home from work the other night, I heard this whining, slamming, croaking noise coming from somewhere under the floor in the lobby of my building. It was coming, say, every eight seconds or so. Loud. (Heh. I had to go back and edit that last bit. Where it says, "It was coming...", I had left the t off the It.)
We live in what used to be a mill building. I guess it still is a mill building, but now people live in it. It doesn't mill anything.
However, I thought, as it once was a mill building that actually milled stuff, maybe, in some low bowel-y level, there was still machinery chugging away in the dark.
Stephen King fans can think of The Mangler. The rest of you can think of, I don't know, big can openers or something. Use your imagination for God's sake.
I could not find the source of the sound. It was one of those weird, behind a wall, confusing acoustic attributes kind of sound. I couldn't pinpoint it. When I thought I was walking near it, it seemed to be behind me all of a sudden.
Since I couldn't find it, I assumed it was no big deal. I continued on about my day.
I went upstairs to change for the gym and to play some Pain on the PS3 as Jenn was not home yet. La, la, oh la. My easily distracted mind forgot all about the sound.
I went back down stairs about 1/2 hour later, and the frequency of the sound had increased to about once every 5 or 6 seconds. Huh. Mildly concerning.
By the time I got back from the gym, it was once every 3 or 4 seconds. Slamming, whining and groaning. Something was actively failing.
After speaking to Jenn about the noise, I decided it would be cool to get it on video. I hadn't used my camera with the nice video capture on it since the honeymoon, so the battery was dead. I charged it up for a while but was chagrined to find it was not accepting a charge. I could not get the camera to turn on.
Damn it, I said.
I was bummed, but something shiny caught my eye and I forgot about the noise again.

We had a pleasant, uneventful evening.
We went to bed.

At 12:30AM, the fire alarm went off. Now, for those of you who do not live in a large building, this is not a 9volt powered fire alarm. The alarm system uses the same klaxons you will hear when the pale rider comes at the end of days.
It's loud.
The alarm system is screwed up, though. It goes off at random times and causes adrenaline spikes and impotent rage. You just try sleeping through an impotent adrenaline rage spike. It's not a warm cup of milk and a cuddly blanket.
So, it goes off and you lie there in a puddle of your own body chemistry, waiting for it to stop.
That's what I was doing. But it didn't stop. And I got concerned.
Then the sound of the machinery failing earlier in the evening slammed into my memory. I got significantly more concerned.
I looked at Jenn and said, "We should get out of the building."

It is interesting, to me anyway, and really that's the point of this whole not blogging thing, that I was attempting to rip my DVD of Die Hard earlier in the evening, because I ran out of the apartment with no shoes on.

I grabbed the dog while Jenn was grabbing the cat. It was cold outside and we have the absolute best combination of animals to have to deal with the cold with.
A chihuahua and a sphinx, which is a hairless cat.
I guess if we had an alligator it would be worse, but it still wasn't very good.
Lulu, my dog, began shivering while we were in the stairway.

My plan was to run downstairs and see if something was in the process of blowing up, before Jenn came downstairs. As it is a large building, we would then have time to go back and get the most important stuff. This was my plan. I was shoe less and mostly asleep carrying a shivering chihuahua. Perhaps my thinking was off a little.
In any case, nothing was blowing up, but it still sounded like it could.
The noise had become a steady, growling rumble that could be heard between the klaxon blasts.
It was definitely under the lobby somewhere, but I still could not target it.
I thought the best idea would be to not be standing in the lobby. So we stood in the front foyer.

Eventually, every fireman in the world showed up. They ran around with axes and big metal things to poke through burning walls with. They ran around for a while, until they eventually just started walking around, looking kind of bored.
This, I thought, was a good sign.
If the firemen come strolling out of your building, you're probably okay.
If they're running out, pushing each other out of the way with their axes and wall pokers, it might be time to split.

While I was sitting there, I became more and more upset that my camera wasn't working, because it would have been a very interesting little piece to show the seemingly innocuous sound early in the evening, then the aftermath of that sound late in the night. I'm still bummed by the opportunity missed and I've been cranky about not blogging because of it.
I know it doesn't make any sense. Leave me alone.

Some things that occurred to me while we were waiting for the okay to go back into the building.

1. The klaxon went on for a long, long, long time. The firemen had to wait for the maintenance man to come open the door to the room where the failed thing was. Don't worry, I'm gonna tell you what the failed thing was. The klaxon sounded like the worlds worst techno rave song. I would have put a kickdrum pattern to it if I had had a drum machine and we could have waved glow sticks around.

2. People kept asking if my feet were cold. I desperately wanted to say "I guess it's better than getting caught with your pants down, eh?", but I knew no one would get it and that would piss me off.

3. Everyone in all the apartments of the building was standing in or around the foyer. It was very cold in the foyer. One guy said, to lighten the mood, "If we all freeze to death, you can eat me." This statement is very much like a riddle and I wanted to have an exchange with him about how dumb what he just said was, but decided to let it go.

4. The same guy, later, said, to lighten the mood, "Wow. Everyone sure has cute pants on." Because most of the women were wearing pajama pants. I don't like people who try to be funny, because, I'm the funny one. People laughed at the "joke" and I didn't like that they had. I shot them all eye-rolling dirty looks, but they didn't seem to notice.

5. I really aggravated myself by using the worldly, knowing nod. What a jerk. A firemen eventually explained to some of us who were curious, what had happened. He said the pump for the water based sprinkler system had failed and that it had kicked off the dry system that then bled itself out. Those two systems failing and kicking off set off every alarm in the building, all at the same time. There are sensors throughout the entire building so if a fire is somewhere, the firemen have some idea where to look. I mean, if they can't see the fire through the windows.
The sensors tell them which part of the building the fire is in.
When the sprinkler systems failed the way they had, they tripped every sensor at the same time. I guess to someone looking at the alarm data, it appeared as though the building had exploded. Hence, every fireman in the world.
I was using the worldly, knowing nod when the fireman was explaining the inner workings of various types of fire deterring systems, including the plumbing needs of fire hydrants in New England as opposed to California.
I kept nodding and saying, "Oh yeah." like I was well versed in international fireplug technology. Stupid ass.

We eventually got the okay to go upstairs. Er... so we did.

We went back to sleep and the alarm went off again. Just for a moment this time, but, it was plenty enough to just totally destroy the rest of the nights sleep for me.

In the morning, I found the maintenance man sitting in the lobby, on a milk crate. I don't know where the hell he found a milk crate, but there it was.
I asked if he had been there all night and he said that he had. It seemed as though that was enough for him to share.
"Have you been here all night?"
"Yes."

Okay.
I prodded.

"Why, have you been here all night?"
He explained that the fire sensing system was now not working at all. Thus, he had been tasked with walking the halls, every 20 minutes or so, to look for signs of fire. He said that he was there for another 1/2 hour until a fireman came to relieve him.
I assumed, when he said, relieve, he meant take over for him, not something else.

I went to work very confident that the building would still be standing when I got home. Very confident indeed.