First, a little story about why you should never listen to people who tell you to leave everything behind when the fire alarm goes off...
At about 8:30 this morning at work, our fire alarm went off. I'd never heard it before and it was pretty terrifying because in addition to the loud screeching sound, a voice says EMERGENCY PLEASE PROCEED TO THE NEAREST EXIT about 500 times on repeat. Since I figured it was just a drill, I didn't grab any of my stuff and headed to the stairs (Side note - I work on the 18th floor of a 19 story building along with about 1200 other employees and judging by the amount of time it took me to get to the ground floor, I would certainly die if my building caught on fire, which is a comforting thought). Once we gathered in the predetermined spot in the parking lot, the safety people ushered us into the convention center next to our building, which seemed kind of weird. Finally, at about 9:30, instead of giving us the all clear to return to work, a woman yelled at us through a megaphone that our building was to be closed until at least 1 p.m. and that we could call a 1-800 number for more information.
About 50% of the people in the room (the men in the room and those women who were smart enough to grab their purses) were really excited because they suddenly didn't have to go back to work and could go home. The other half of us began cursing at our dumb selves for leaving all of our stuff in the office. Ann and I didn't have a cell phone, a wallet, or a set of keys between us (but we did have two cars parked snugly in the parking garage just waiting to take us home!). Thankfully, our coworker David said he'd drive us to my house where we could use my land line to keep in touch with people and I could at least get my spare keys, assuming I could get a ride back to town. Also, we picked my house because even though I live much farther away from work than she does, I have cable, and Ann doesn't have TV. Priorities.
Eventually, after a few hours of watching the Food Network, Ann's nice husband Steve picked us up and gave us some cash and dropped us off downtown. It was really nice of him to come and get us, but also kind of like having your parents drop you off at the mall in junior high. By 2 p.m., after a delicious lunch at the F Street Station, a restaurant that, amazingly, I had been to but Ann had not, we headed back to the office to find that work was canceled for the day and the security people would give us NO MORE THAN FIVE MINUTES to grab our things. Thank you, security people, for not making me drive around town without my license!
Sadly I think we have to go back to work tomorrow, but I did learn an important lesson today, which is, despite what you've always been told, when the fire alarm goes off, you should grab all your stuff because otherwise they might close the building and then you'll be without all of your stuff and bumming rides off of people like a 15 year old girl trying to get to the mall. But I digress...
When I got home around 2:30, the sun was out so I grabbed Ripley and headed up to the mountains to take some pictures of the fall colors and get us some exercise.
Alaska may not have a bunch of maple trees that turn colors in the fall, but the brush in the mountains turns the most amazing colors. The pictures do not do it justice. When it's sunny, you can even see the red color on the hills from downtown.
As I was walking out of the Powerline Pass area, I saw a bunch of people looking across at the hillside:
You can't see from here...let me use my crazy zoom lens:
Two bull moose!
And yes, those pictures were taken from the same spot. One at 18mm and the next two zoomed ALL THE WAY. I love my new camera lens.
Here's a computer enhanced one of one of the moose:
A little to the right, there was another large group of bull moose (first a far shot):
I think there are three, maybe four more in this patch of woods. They're really easy to spot because of their
It's already zoomed in pretty well with the camera, but here's a closer view:
No comments:
Post a Comment