EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

Originally, my plan was to get up early Saturday morning, and take the train to Worchester (pronounced “Woo-ster”), where they have a museum/theme park called the EcoTarium (pronounced "Ee-ko-tear-ri-yum). Throughout the summer months, up until October 23rd, the EcoTarium hosts these tours where ordinary joes like you and me can experience what it’s like to be a treetop scientist. Imagine wooden bridges “spanning 150 feet,” suspended roughly “40 feet in the air” (I’m quoting directly from the Eco-Tarium’s web site, EcoTarium: Tree Canopy Walkway). Close-toed shoes only. Harnesses and helmets provided for your safety. Sounds like my kind of danger.

However, after getting off the phone with K. around 11 p.m. last night, J. (my roommate) knocked on my door, which was perfectly alright, since my light was still on. Her friend from school, the one who gave her the wireless router, had stopped in with her, and wanted to check out our Internet problem. M. was his name, and he asked me to bring my laptop out of my room, and leave it on the living room table, so he could make the necessary adjustments.

I suppose that I could have gone right back to bed, but I thought, What the hey, I’ll stay out here and observe M. as he performs technological wizardry. His technological wizardry, as it turned out, involved mostly unplugging cables, replugging them someplace else, then switching those cables with other cables. It was a lot of fun, but the wireless internet still didn’t work.

At some point, I did ask him if we needed some sort of CD, which might have come with the router. M. seemed to think that was a distinct possibility, but first he wanted to take the router home, hit it with a hammer or something, to see if that got it working right. So he left with the router at around midnight. I plugged my laptop directly into the high-speed cable internet, went to the Netgear web site to see if there was software to download. Not finding any, I just opted to pack up and go to bed.

All went well and slumberlike ‘til about 2 am, when I found myself woken up by this klaxon coming in from the window. I muttered something about goddamn car alarms, went to my desk, and got out a pair of earplugs. After plugging my ears, I hopped back into bed, and pulled the soft, cool bedsheet over myself. Then my eyes kinda jolted open, and I thought to myself, Hey, that loud, annoying alarm wasn’t coming from outside the window.

So I put on some pants and went to the bedroom door. Upon opening it, the klaxon did indeed grow louder. But clearly, it originated from the hallway outside the front door. Since the protracted, mechanical horn sounded exceptionally strange and unsettling (and most likely, my late night bleariness contributed to my off-kilter state), I found myself actually quite worried about opening the door, lest some monstrous Grendel with an iron lung happened to be waiting to devour me. Now, we have a pair of deadbolts on the door, was well as an indentation in the carpet, in which we place an iron bar—our official New York-style police lock. At my most adorably paranoid, I removed the iron bar, and held it at the ready, while slowly undoing the deadbolts with my other hand. As I let the door swing open, I stepped back and held up my makeshift weapon like a spear. No doubt, any unnatural beast that might have been dwelling in that adjacent passageway would have been instantly intimidated, having come face-to-face with me, a not-so-tall, not nearly as tattooed version of Queequeg.

But wouldn’t you know it, there was no monster. Instead, I was greeted by a hallway full of smoke. The old saying goes, where’s there’s smoke, there’s… In this case, however, there was no sign of fire, no shimmering haze announcing the presence of escaping heat. But there was definitely smoke. So I woke my roommate, and we promptly left the building. We stood underneath the awning in the entranceway (It had already begun raining as early as Friday night) with several other tenants, whom by this time had hypothesized that there were no flames about to engulf the building, that a fire alarm had been pulled as a prank. Then two fire trucks arrived (It seemed like an overreaction, but better safe than sorry, I guess), and a line of firefighters, wearing their heavy black jackets and helmets, axes at their sides, proceeded to enter the abandoned edifice with all the seriousness of a procession of pallbearers at a funeral. Several minutes later, they emerged, and informed us that a fire extinguisher had gone off, which in turn set off the fire alarm, somehow.

So you figure, the firefighters check out the alarm, find out there’s no fire, so they turn off the alarm, and send us all back to our warm blankees. Right? Not quite. Turns out someone had to call the Hamilton Building Company, and tell them to send over a guy (or gal) to turn off their alarm. J. and I made the call, but the fella didn’t arrive for who-knows-how-long. Sure, we both went back to our respective rooms and the business of trying to fall asleep again. But since the klaxon emanated most strongly from outside our door, no sleep was to be had, at least not by me.

In closing, I’m not sure how many hours I slept last night, but I was shocked to see the time when I finally crawled out of bed. It was still raining pretty bad out, so the day was shot. It’s Tuesday today, and it never did stop raining since Saturday. Maybe the entire week will be shot. Weather’s just too yucky, you know? On the bright side, I have a DVD of "Kiki’s Delivery Service," with the original Japanese audio track. I could watch that.