so as it turns out, i could have died the other day. this is my office building
and this is my floor
on the plus side of being the top floor, the 360-view of outside and sunshine(!) are unbeatable. the only thing that would make it better would be if it was one of those spinny restaurants that moves around in circles as you eat. we do have free pretzels and granola bars at my office though, so i guess that’s kind-of the same.
on the down side, you’re always the last to know when the building’s on fire. we were all diligently (lie) working when one of our consultants runs over and announces “um…there are like 100 people on the grass outside...looks like they’re evacuating the building.” i was careful not to use any exclamation points to describe her announcement because there was no exclamation involved. this might be a good time to say that i work for a really laid-back company.
so, after we all got done with what we were working on, picked up all of our personal items and finally started smelling smoke, we decided to join our building-buddies in the grass (after meandering down the 12 flights of stairs). there was lots of smoke. and this is what came to our rescue.
there were probably about 32 fire trucks, a couple of ambulances, a few dozen police cars and even one of those cool unmarked vans you see on csi. it was like a little party – only i was sad everyone forgot the marshmallows (i guess i never knew that word was spelled with an “a” as in mallow. i always pictured an “e” because marshmellows mellow me out. what is a mallow anyway? (it’s a plant…i just looked it up)).
so, tons of flashing lights and smoke and a surprising amount of unalarmed onlookers. i guess everyone was secretly hoping the building would burn down because, hey, day off! i wanted to let my loved ones know that i was a goner so this is the string of texts i sent meghan. i had to keep sending her stuff because she kept not responding (she claims her phone was dead) (i don’t believe her)):
1. maybe my office is on fire
2. that’s it for me!
3. i’m a goner!
4. tell milo i love him very much
5. goodbye cruel world!
6. woman! do you not care that your only sister is dying in a fire here?
i have such a caring family. don’t worry though. i was just trying to scare her. i wasn’t really dying. just sitting on the grass watching the firefighters spray water all over the place. as it turns out, our official office dumpster was on fire..not the actual building. i’m not really sure that it’s our official dumpster, but i assume it is because clearly someone wanted to burn it down and that only happens with official stuff. also, how else would you explain the csi van?
