last monday i swept and mopped our main staircase from top to bottom. no sooner had i finished than i discovered that someone had urinated on the landing between the main floor and the first floor. right in the middle of the afternoon, no less, and while i was mopping it!
so, last night was my only night off all week. janelle and i watched a movie while we had supper, and then i rode the bike to the library and returned some books and took out Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce and went to canadian tire and bought a new weight scale and then picked up some arrowroot cookies and gingerale for janelle. janelle and i spent the rest of the evening relaxing and doing not much of anything and around eleven thirty we went to bed. we read together for a little bit and talked for a while and then i turned out the lights and we prepared to go to sleep.
no sooner had i closed my eyes than a horribly annoying ringing sound started going off in my ear. it took me a few seconds to figure out what it was. the fire alarm. as i climbed out of bed, janelle looked at the clock. midnight. dang. it always happens at midnight.
i got my pants and shirt on and called joy. she was heading down to the fire panel to find out where the alarm was going off. the fire panel indicated four locations, one being the eleventh floor, another being the second floor, and two in the basement. she directed me to the second floor but when i got there, there was nothing happening, no fire, no sprinkler, just the annoyingly persistent ringing of the fire alarm. looking through the window, i noticed that the fire department had arrived, so i made my way down to the main floor and found joy, just as the firefighters were coming in.
joy took two of the firefighters down to the basement sprinkler room and i took the rest up to the eleventh floor in the elevator. my fire key broke off in the elevator key hole, so joy and i had to switch keys, which resulted in an embarassing fiasco that i'm not going to write about here.
henry, our maintenance chief showed up shortly after the firefighters did and immediately took charge.
anyways, we got to the eleventh floor and saw water streaming out from under the door of two of the apartments. the firefighters got the door of one opened, and were banging on the other one but there was no answer. i unlocked it but the door was chained shut, so they banged and yelled some more. finally they cut the chain and forced the door open, stamping into the apartment. water was streaming into the apartment from under the wall. the carpet was already soaked. the firefighters had to wake up the occupants. back in the other apartment, they discovered that a sprinkler head had gone off, spraying water all over the apartment. when they had made certain that there was no fire, the firefighters turned the water off for that floor and smashed the toilet to drain the water, then started the long and tedious process of containing the water spill. i fetched a shop-vac from the basement and brought it up to begin vacuuming water out of the carpets.
the firefighters did what they could and then left, and the sprinkler people came and replaced the sprinkler head and turned the water back on and then they left. and joy called the carpet people and then we waited for them.
it turned out that the water flooded the apartments on the tenth, ninth, and eighth floors as well.
i was impressed with the carpet people. there were four of them, they came at around two thirty, one at a time. they brought sixteen dehumidifiers, at least as many blowers, and a bunch of water sucking vacuumes. they lifted the carpets and cut out all the underlay and threw it in the garbage, and then stuck blowers and dehumidifiers under the carpets.
as soon as the carpet people got themselves all set up, henry went back home and joy and i went to bed. it was three o'clock by the time i got home. thankfully, they let me sleep in until noon the next day.
so, last night was my only night off all week. janelle and i watched a movie while we had supper, and then i rode the bike to the library and returned some books and took out Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce and went to canadian tire and bought a new weight scale and then picked up some arrowroot cookies and gingerale for janelle. janelle and i spent the rest of the evening relaxing and doing not much of anything and around eleven thirty we went to bed. we read together for a little bit and talked for a while and then i turned out the lights and we prepared to go to sleep.
no sooner had i closed my eyes than a horribly annoying ringing sound started going off in my ear. it took me a few seconds to figure out what it was. the fire alarm. as i climbed out of bed, janelle looked at the clock. midnight. dang. it always happens at midnight.
i got my pants and shirt on and called joy. she was heading down to the fire panel to find out where the alarm was going off. the fire panel indicated four locations, one being the eleventh floor, another being the second floor, and two in the basement. she directed me to the second floor but when i got there, there was nothing happening, no fire, no sprinkler, just the annoyingly persistent ringing of the fire alarm. looking through the window, i noticed that the fire department had arrived, so i made my way down to the main floor and found joy, just as the firefighters were coming in.
joy took two of the firefighters down to the basement sprinkler room and i took the rest up to the eleventh floor in the elevator. my fire key broke off in the elevator key hole, so joy and i had to switch keys, which resulted in an embarassing fiasco that i'm not going to write about here.
henry, our maintenance chief showed up shortly after the firefighters did and immediately took charge.
anyways, we got to the eleventh floor and saw water streaming out from under the door of two of the apartments. the firefighters got the door of one opened, and were banging on the other one but there was no answer. i unlocked it but the door was chained shut, so they banged and yelled some more. finally they cut the chain and forced the door open, stamping into the apartment. water was streaming into the apartment from under the wall. the carpet was already soaked. the firefighters had to wake up the occupants. back in the other apartment, they discovered that a sprinkler head had gone off, spraying water all over the apartment. when they had made certain that there was no fire, the firefighters turned the water off for that floor and smashed the toilet to drain the water, then started the long and tedious process of containing the water spill. i fetched a shop-vac from the basement and brought it up to begin vacuuming water out of the carpets.
the firefighters did what they could and then left, and the sprinkler people came and replaced the sprinkler head and turned the water back on and then they left. and joy called the carpet people and then we waited for them.
it turned out that the water flooded the apartments on the tenth, ninth, and eighth floors as well.
i was impressed with the carpet people. there were four of them, they came at around two thirty, one at a time. they brought sixteen dehumidifiers, at least as many blowers, and a bunch of water sucking vacuumes. they lifted the carpets and cut out all the underlay and threw it in the garbage, and then stuck blowers and dehumidifiers under the carpets.
as soon as the carpet people got themselves all set up, henry went back home and joy and i went to bed. it was three o'clock by the time i got home. thankfully, they let me sleep in until noon the next day.
poor muffin! you're wonderful!
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