Mid-morning excitement

So I’m teaching this training class today when the fire alarm starts flashing and we hear a garbled and crackling announcement come out of speakers we didn’t even notice were in the ceiling.  No idea what the announcement kept repeating, but we came to the conclusion that we should probably evacuate the building.  We joined all the other people streaming up the stairs (the class is held on the lowest basement level), but no one knew what was going on.  The security guards on the main level said only the alarms on the basement levels were going off and no one in the rest of the building had any idea what was going on.  They determined it was a false alarm pretty quickly (or so we heard) and we all went back inside, but the whole experience makes me a wonder a little.  I can only assume someone somewhere was taking it seriously, but I haven’t seen any evidence of that.  Nuclear summit, anyone?  Federal building?

I remembered one other reason I don’t want to make metro my primary way of getting to work: I can’t read on the train anymore!  How horrible is that?  I discovered that I get a little carsick on the metro (train-sick?  Motion-sick doesn’t sound right.  Nauseous will do, but that’s a little strong for how I felt.) even while not reading on Sunday, when we took the metro to and from DC for the race (but that could have been ’cause I’d hardly eaten.  Maybe I was hungry).  Then yesterday, I tried to read in the morning and found I couldn’t.  I tried again on the way home (Persistent, right?  Well, it’s important!), but I could only read when the train was stopped.  So if I can’t read, where’s the advantage of letting someone else drive?  Sure, I can’t read in the car, but I have books on CD.  And yes, I could download those books to mp3 and use my headphones, but that takes work.  And lest we forget, I’m lazy.  And super tired when I get home from work.  I’m barely able to make dinner.  I didn’t mean to start whining.  Not that much, anyway.

It’s early and I have some free time

Sometime last month I installed a widget to track blog stats, and since then I’ve gotten a little obsessive.  Which is completely ridiculous, since my highest views-per-day count is only 49, and that was unusual.  This is not a high-traffic site.  🙂  But I like to watch the search terms that bring people here, and in the last week or so, quite a large number of people (comparatively speaking) have been coming here from a search for “bernese mountain dog puppies”.  One time (ONE TIME!) I posted a picture of some adorable puppies that happened to be Bernese Mountain Dogs (because, let’s face it, they are the cutest puppies), and now all these people hoping for a Bernese Mountain Dog site are disappointed.  Sorry, people.  But they came!  Maybe some will stay.

This morning’s class is supposed to start at 8:30.  It’s 8:18, and I haven’t seen a single person.  Usually there’s at least one person who comes early.  Besides me.  I have to be early.

Whoops.  I was just plunged into darkness.  The lights in this room are motion-sensitive, and I guess one person typing in the back of the room doesn’t create enough motion to keep them on.

Hey!  There’s my one early person.  Time to stop playing.