That joke I was telling you about

Let me tell you about how awesome today is.

It's not raining at this exact moment (though my living room just got disturbingly dark, so I may have to retract that statement by the end of this post), it's kind of warm, so I got to wear my new skirt, and I don't have to work today. I cannot think of anything grander. Except ... everyone else is working. Dang.

Seriously, guys. Dave's working his other job. My friends are all working. My dryer is working. You guys are bunch of downers, man.

But, as promised, that hilarious joke about the fire alarm. Ha. This is a good one.

We stayed up late on Wednesday night to watch "Match Point" (and it is the best movie I've seen in a long time), because, hey, who needs more than six hours of sleep if they only have one work day left of the week, right? But just as I was getting to REM, EEEERRRR EERRR woke me up (I don't really know how to spell out the sound, but remember elementary school? Remember those fire alarms with the lights and the mechanical duck sounding alarm? It was like that, lights included, only no teachers going "single file, single file!").

And so I did exactly what firemen everywhere tell us not to do ... I got dressed, I grabbed some stuff just in case the apartment burnt down, and we calmly ran downstairs, at 2:30 a.m.

I don't think I should endorse the grabbing of stuff, but ... Mom didn't raise an idiot. I like my stuff, ergo, I'm taking it with me. Plus, after the last run-in with the fire department, I already had all my favorite stuff moved into the bedroom-to-front-door path, for easy grab-and-go. I can tell you this now, because it's no longer true, but I was pretty much convinced that our building was going to burn down after the first alarm thing in January, so I had a suitcase packed under the bed for a while with my favorite things in it. But it turns out that's not really practical, as your favorite things soon become "things inside that embarrassing suitcase that you forget about."

And we waited outside for an hour. Coincidentally, we got to meet the new neighbors (who smartly decided to leave the yipping dog, Charlie Barkley, upstairs). Turns out they're pretty normal after all. They have a cute 2 1/2-year old kid, too. Maybe I'll get a babysitting gig outta this. That'd be sweet.

Anyhow. Turns out something in the equipment room was sparking, according to the alarm company's remarks. That was great, except no one -- building manager included -- knew we had an equipment room, so the fire department wandered around for a while before finding it in the basement. We live in an old hospital, so we assumed basement = morgue. So if you do believe in ghosts, this may add fuel to your fire. No pun intended. Myself? I live in an old hospital, so in order to sleep at night, I do not believe in ghosts.

(Photo: From gallery.jgdm.com.)