Why last night sucked
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Early-morning fire alarm
From Don Nunn’s photo streamOr: How Don got only about 2.5 hours sleep and still functioned reasonably well the next day.
You may not be able to tell from the spastic motion displayed in this photograph, but it’s a fire truck. Specifically, a big ladder truck belonging to Snohomish County Fire District No. 7. The truck responded to a fire alarm at one of the buildings west of mine sometime around 02:00 today.
I’d had tremendous difficulty getting to sleep because of someone’s goddamned dog and my two felines. The dog was barking just loudly and annoyingly enough to intrude on my consciousness a few times as I drifted toward sleep, and my cats took my stirring to mean it was time to play Indy 500 on the Don’s Bed Speedway. By the time I’d evicted the cats from the bedroom and closed the window all the way, the alarm sound had penetrated my awareness, and a few minutes later the fire trucks appeared.
Of course my camera was at the opposite end of the house—I was upstairs in the master (back) bedroom, camera was in the Escape in the garage—so by the time I got back to the bedroom the fire truck had started a slow circling of the parking lot as the fighters tried to locate the emergency. I’m wondering why they didn’t fire up their spotlights and look for building numbers, but oh well.
In the end, I only saw two firefighters leave the truck and only long enough to walk into the building northwest of mine. They weren’t in there long enough to put out fires or even knock down a door; I imagine they just checked on something and, finding nothing wrong, returned to the truck, which circled once more and left shortly after.
The alarm shut off a minute or so after that, and I was wide awake with my digital camera and a load of adrenaline and irritation surging through me.
So I shot some other photos too, to fiddle with the camera’s various manual and automatic modes. You can see the other shots in my Flickr postings for 06/28/05.
Apparent from this photo: My hands aren’t very steady. And my bedroom windows are really dirty.