Last night when Tim and Miko dropped me off after dinner, I went through the main lobby of the apartment building just like always. Only this time, there was a guy in Carharts standing on a ladder with his head in the dripping ceiling. I laughed and got on the elevator and went on upstairs.
About 20 minutes later, just when the sun was finally going down, the ear piercing fire alarm went off.
I knew it was probably related to the sprinkler problem in the lobby, so I didn't panic. Instead I casually got a few important things together (MacBook Air, iPad, etc) and headed down to the garage.
My thinking was that if the house really was on fire, I wanted to be sure The Jeep was not in the basement.
Then I drove out of the garage and to the far end of the parking lot where I backed in to a spot and watched.
About thirty people filed out of the stairwells during the fifteen minutes that I was sitting there. The thing is, if that was everyone in the building at 8 PM (prime apartment living time, no less) then our building is less than 20% full. Even if 30% of the occupants were at dinner, that still means that we're less than 50% full.
So if we have so many vacancies, why is everyone's rent going up?
As it turned out, the nice firemen gave us all the ok to go back in, it was just a malfunctioning sprinkler system. Thank goodness for that! And thank goodness it only triggered the alarm and didn't start spraying water everywhere.
The picture is from my balcony, after they gave us the all-clear.
