The important things

Today was just your usual lazy Sunday. Slept late, had coffee, went for a walk, watched a movie, had our building evacuated in a fire alarm.

You know, the usual.

The building we live in is quite new, and it seems to be going through some growing pains. We've had a couple of fire alarms (and one small electrical fire in another part of the building), along with some plumbing, electrical, cable and other small issues. None of the fire alarms amounted to anything, of course. The alarm system is so sophisticated no one knows how to work it, how it gets tripped, or, most unfortunately, how to stop it.

So you will excuse me if I say that today's fire alarm was kind of an "eh" occasion. Rich was in the shower. It was 5:30 and we had plans to see a movie at 6. We heard a strange noise, like someone was making a speech out in the plaza....but boy was it repetitive. While he rub-a-dub-dubbed, I searched out the source of the noise, and discovered it was coming from the stairwell, the fire alarm being a deep man's voice that basically repeated (in Norwegian) "Hey. Fire alarm. Get the fuck out. Don't use the elevator".

I came back into the flat and looked over the balcony and saw all our neighbors downstairs, in the plaza. Hmm...Rich in shower, soaking wet.....and all our neighbors downstairs looking up at me like "Hey dumbass? You should be down here?" I told Rich that maybe we should go downstairs, as it seemed everyone else was there as well. Block party?

I put on a nice black dress and some shoes (I did think about that and wore ones that were cute for movie night but also sensible, in case I would end up wearing them for, like, a week or something). I then wandered lazily about the house grabbing things I thought were important. These turned out to be: the tickets to the movie at 6pm, my iPod, my jewelry box, my passport, my Mulberry purse and my birth certificate. Rich collected his passport and our marriage certificate. Well, grabbed is maybe a bit optimistic, more like, arranged them nicely in his backpack after first drying off and putting on his clothes. It was really interesting how unconcerned we were, and really how little we thought about our stuff.

We leisurely exited the building after the alarm had been going for about 15 minutes. Of course there was no smoke smell or anything or we might have moved substantially faster. We joined all our neighbors downstairs, all of us in various states of half dress, angst or, like us, complete unconcern.

The firemen showed up as we got downstairs and made a beeline for the bakery that has its home downstairs, succeeding in setting off the burglar alarm, adding to the din. We met some friends outside, greeted them, and saw they had tickets to the movie as well. We chatted a bit, the firemen got the alarm off, and we went back upstairs to deposit jewelry and documents.

We got to the movie by 5:50, plenty of time for popcorn beforehand. Our friends were sitting two rows behind us.

We saw Pirates of the Caribbean 2. I give it a 5.5.