Mostly Harmless

Yesterday marked the third day in a row that my apartment building wasn’t on fire when I got home. I’m pretty happy about that.

On Sunday I drove into the underground garage, parked the car, and walked upstairs to my apartment past the wailing fire alarms. If you’ve ever lived in an apartment building you know that most of these things are false alarms — at this building the alarms are false about 60% of the time, apparently, ‘cuz this is the second fire in the last few years.

The first “fire” was merely some smoldering in a laundry basket on the third floor. This time the entire game room was totally destroyed in a non-trivial fire on, once again, the third floor — about 30 feet from the last fire. Coincidence? I think not! The people on the third floor can’t be trusted, that’s what I say… luckily I live on the ground floor and can pretty much walk out my front door or patio door at a very leisurely pace if the building’s really on fire; I rarely raise an eyebrow when the alarms are going off.

I must have gotten home mere minutes after the fire started because only the fire marshal’s car had arrived by the time I went out to chat with one of the building managers. Eventually there were at least 5 different fire trucks on the scene and yet it wasn’t terribly exciting due to lack of visible flames and such. Some TV camera guy showed up, a bit late, and seemed disappointed by the lack of flames and smoke… yeah, cry me a river pal.

I suppose you want the fire to be described as “not terribly exciting” when it’s your building that’s on fire.

If it had been a really exciting fire I would be a lot further along in the house buying process and wouldn’t have to clean my apartment or move any possessions… I’ve got renter’s insurance… bring it on*.

* This is not an invitation for some smart-ass to burn down my apartment building, FYI.