I'm the only one in the building at 10pm on a Sunday night...

...so a fire alarm is rather disconcerting. Usually the fire alarms here are due to someone doing drywall or something else dust-inducing near a fire sensor. Repairing the constantly-broken elevator factors highly into the fire alarm catalyst function as well. But when no one is around to do anything, it increases the liklihood that it might actually be a real fire.

So I get to use the seldom-traveled emergency exit, and I go to my "muster area" which is somewhat of a misnomer when I'm the only person standing outside the building. Having nothing better to do, I timed the response. It took about eight minutes between when the fire alarms went off and when the fire truck was parked at the entrance to the building and the firemen were heading in. Mind you, the fire station is literally across the street. The problem is that there is a security fence inbetween them and my building, and they have to drive way around and get past a security checkpoint. Would be ironic if we actually had a fire, but of course...

The firemen come back out of the building and leave. And I'm still standing there... Safety procedure indicates that we go to our muster areas and the all-clear will be sent over the radio to the muster chief who will tell us we can go back in. Well I'm the only person there and I'm not a muster chief.

So I walk over to one of the other guard posts and ask what the deal is and they tell me to go back inside. Once I get back into my building, I can smell a lot of smoke in the lobby. Turns out one of the guards on duty managed to ignite a pizza in the microwave.

Well that was fun... another hour gone from my rapidly-lengthening night.