The Roof, The Roof, The Roof Is On Fire...

Trevor, Henry, and I had an anxious experience in the wee hours of Friday morning. We'd spent Thursday night hanging around at Juli and Matt's new crib, drinking some beer, eating some pizza, and watching the start of the new season of NBC sitcoms (Outsourced was d.r.e.a.d.f.u.l.). We were home and in bed by a little after ten and sleeping soundly.

At about two in the morning, our neighbor, Doug, pounded on our door, waking up Henry and Trevor instantly (I took a bit longer, as I tend to do...). When Trevor answered the door, Doug was already back down the hall, having banged on everyone's door, and he shouted, "Get out of the building, there's a fire on the roof." So we quickly got dressed, grabbed Henry, and were out. Our hallway was full of shattered glass from the door leading out into the parking lot, but otherwise, there wasn't much noise other than our muffled footsteps and the murmurs of confusion from us and our next door neighbors, Poppy and Jason. But as soon as we got outside and looked up at the building, this is what we saw:

The street was lined with fire engines, ambulances, and police SUVs. The men from Ladder 19 had their giant ladder up to our roof and they had the fire out in about thirty minutes (see some footage on the NBC website here and another story about it from CBS here). We saw right away that no one was being carried out of the building, and the ambulances weren't going anywhere, so we just stood around, watching the flames and smoke filling the sky, and then watching the firemen to firemen-type activities for two hours. Henry was in a state of pure excitement since many of our building's residents have dogs, and he was trying to get to all of them. We were finally let back in with the rest of the pajama clad residents at around four in the morning (and I was finally able to use the restroom--that'll teach me to say, "No, I'd better evacuate the building instead of waiting to use the facilities, because I might die in a fiery inferno," and blah blah blah).

The next morning--or, later on that same morning--Trevor took some pictures of the damaged deck from our common deck on top of the six floor roof.

The rumor in the building is that a coal grill turned over, setting the deck on fire. I wouldn't be surprised if that was true, since the wind was blowing like mad that night. Thankfully none of the other decks--and no roofs of adjacent buildings--caught on fire. Some of our neighbors, the ones in the center of our hallway around the same place as the fire four stories up, got a lot of water damage in their units, but we, thankfully, had none. The management company set to cleaning up the damage pretty quickly on Friday morning, and they worked on it all day yesterday as well.

We were exhausted at work all day--I usually don't go to campus on Fridays, but I had two meetings, one of which I'd called, so I needed to go in. And we of course had plans on Friday night to go see the MCA/Redmoon Theater collaboration, "The Astronaut's Birthday," on the steps of the museum. Here are a couple of pictures of the production:

They'd set up three levels of puppeteers in the front windows of the museum, and bleachers and empty space on the front. We were lucky enough to get bleacher seats instead of plunking down straight on the concrete (though our butts were achy nonetheless after a very long hour). The graphics and presentation were terrific, but the story left quite a bit to be desired. The show did, though, remind us of how much fun we'd had at a previous Redmoon show and that we should go back again soon, especially since their space is just a few blocks from our place.

By the time we got home that night, having both worked full days on just a few hours of sleep, we were ready to crash. And we certainly did.

So, that was our mid-week excitement! Friday morning on my way in on the train, there was a pedestrian accident at the Barrington Metra station, so my train was delayed--only about twenty minutes, while the in-bound trains were delayed over an hour. I was on pins and needles all day, thinking, "These things come in threes, isn't that what people say?" But thankfully there wasn't a third disaster; or at least not one in my immediate circle of life.

Well, now I've got to go, since I spent most of yesterday being a vegetable to make up for my lack of vegetableness on Friday (a day usually reserved for me doing 3.47 hours of work and then being a couch zucchini [a much lazier vegetable than a potato, f.y.i.] for the remainder of the day), which means that I didn't get much done. I'm doing laundry at present, and blogging instead of working on tomorrow's lesson plan, grading the forty-odd papers I have to grade, and working on my tenure portfolio. Yikes. I'll sign off, and here's to hoping that the temperature doesn't drop much below sixty for at least another month!