Yep, it's a bunch of random stuff!

A few days ago, Rick said something like, "I think it's time to update the blog..." To which I'm sure I gave some snarky reply... but I suppose I really SHOULD update the blog, lest it appear I have fallen off the face of the earth...

No, no, have not fallen off yet... I am still here on Earth -- slightly shivering in my rather cool Chicago condo. (And by "cool" I am referring to the temperature... although I would also assign the "cool" adjective to this condo when referring to its general existence. It IS a pretty groovy condo... No? Not groovy? Uhh... rad? Totally awesome?? Well, whatever... the point is, I like my condo...) I broke down and turned the heater on yesterday, for the first time since the weather started cooling down. I've just been making do with long sleeves during the day, and a blanket on the couch for watching TV at night when it's even cooler. But yesterday my long sleeves just weren't enough... after a couple hours of trying to warm my icy hands, I gave in and fired up the heater.

So fall is definitely here... but as I was telling Faisal a couple weeks ago, I have some kind of weird, arbitrary rule for when it is acceptable to wear a sweater. I can't pull my sweaters out until at least October. September is long-sleeved t-shirt weather, and October is the beginning of sweater weather. (Yeah, I don't get it, either. But I'm just gonna go with it, because it seems weirdly logical to me for absolutely no reason whatsoever...)

This afternoon, after I'd worked out and showered and was hanging out in a bathrobe, trying to decide what to wear out to dinner, the fire alarm out in the hallway by the elevator began wailing. This is not a totally unusual occurrence -- that thing seems to randomly go off every couple of months. However, usually, when it starts ringing, it stops after two or three minutes, at the most. (It's kind of a "boy who cried wolf" thing -- because when the fire alarm obviously so often sounds for no reason whatsoever, how are we supposed to know when it's going off for a REASON??) When it went off this afternoon, it didn't stop after the usual few minutes... and after about ten minutes of incessant, unrelenting droning, I heard the sound of sirens out on the street right outside (which is also not at all unusual). That's when I asked Rick, "is there REALLY a fire this time??" I actually did the whole "feel the door and make sure it's not hot" thing, and then I opened it to see if I could smell any smoke out in the hallway... but nope. Everything seemed normal... except for that maddening fire alarm...

Still, part of me wondered if I should've been changing into something more substantial than a bathrobe... because no way would I want to frantically evacuate my building, in a bathrobe, in the middle of the 5 o'clock influx of pedestrians who crowd the sidewalks right outside every weekday. Rick finally decided to just head downstairs to get the mail, and see if he could figure out what was going on. When he got back, he informed me that there were, in fact, firefighters milling about in the lobby... but none of them looked panicked or were moving very quickly. What's more, Rick reported that other residents were going about their days as usual, collecting their mail, etc. So basically, there seemed to be no reason to go running out onto the street in my less-than-proper attire. But we decided to stay put until the fire alarm stopped screaming at us... because if there ever WAS a reason to rush out, I would want to make sure I brought the cats along with me...

The alarm finally stopped after about a half hour. And Rick found out from the doorman that the issue was a broken water pump in the fire suppression system -- so there wasn't ANY sort of fire at all, but apparently the inability to extinguish a fire, if necessary, is enough cause for alarm. A whooooooole lot of alarm. (You'd think a broken pump could just notify the front desk or the fire department... the entire building really didn't need to know about that...)

And here's one final bit of randomness:

My nephew is starting to look less like the Cutest Baby in the World and more like the Cutest Little Boy in the World...

Remember when he looked like this?? :)