No rest for the weary

The weekends are when I usually compensate for any sleep debt I've run up during the week. So you can imagine my ire when my apartment building's fire alarms went off at 5 a.m. Saturday morning (a mere 4 hours after I rested my head on my pillow)...and again at shortly before midnight on Sunday (right after I had finally fallen asleep).

It turns out that one occurence was caused by a small drip in the building's fire sprinkler system, and the other by air in the pipes of the same system. A system that is very sensitive, apparently.

Much like The Boy Who Cried Wolf, all of these false alarms have made me quite disinclined to evacuate the building as I technically should. Instead, I evacuate to my rooftop patio to watch the ferries, the sliding glass doors muffling the shrill sound to a sufficient degree.

So, much like Pavlov's dog, last night I was fully expecting to be rudely awoken from dreamland. I was pleasantly surprised (pleasant being a relative concept in this case) when the alarm went off while I was still actively awake. Off to the patio we went. Apparently the fire department (they must be really sick of showing up at my building every day) decided that our alarm system needed to be turned off. Which means that the fire doors stayed closed, the elevators stayed offline, and forced air rushed down each blocked-off section of the corridors, creating a wind-tunnel effect. All of that in case there really is a fire before the system is fixed. Lovely.