My first night in Boston was interrupted at about 3:45am by a klaxon to wake the dead. It was the fire alarm. Buzzing and flashing spurring me to involuntary action, I was on my feet before my eyes were able to fully focus.

Somehow, in my grogginess, I managed to have enough of my brain function to do the following:
put on pants (as I was sleeping in a Padres “beisbol” tshirt and undies)
unplug iBook and shove it in backpack
grab camera from the table where I had uploaded pictures the night before, and shove it in backpack
grab room key
grab wallet
grab backpack

I already had my presentation notes and the checks I’d previously received from clients in the bag (thank heavens, as I did not think about them until later).

And, slipping into my flip-flops, I was headed out into the atrium and down the stairs still without any full cognitive thought.

Luckily, it was a warm night so those of us gathered outside weren’t uncomfortable. Just sleepy and worried. About the same time as I got out front, the firemen arrived, and I whipped out my camera figuring that this might end up being a significant event. How I managed to take low-light photos at all, with only 2 hours sleep and full grogginess in my brain, I’ll never know. But I did:

Most of the hotel was empty by then, as the firemen rushed in to inspect the hotel (there was no obvious smoke or anything though the hallway outside my room was quite warm). Many of the guests are elderly as there are many hospitals nearby–the guests are patients and families of patients, but they still got out of the hotel in good time. No complaining, just people checking to see if other people were okay:

I called Christopher to let him know what was happening, and to calm myself a bit. While talking with him I noticed that there were people looking out windows in the hotel still–looking out on the firetrucks and everyone lined up outside. I couldn’t believe their stupidity! The fire alarm goes off in the middle of the night but they chose not to escape?! People in wheelchairs had gotten out but these obviously able-bodied people didn’t bother? You just know that if things had been worse, they’d end up needing to be rescued.

Anyway, after about 15 or 20 minutes, the firemen came out: gave the “all clear,” and in we went in an orderly fashion. When I got to my room I emailed Christopher to let him know it was a false alarm, and went back to bed. I was exhausted.

In the morning, I went to upload the photos I had taken of the event. My USB cable was gone.

It had been on the table the night before, but it was gone, gone. I went through everything I had, twice, then it dawned on me–I grabbed the camera last night off the table; the cable had been next to the camera; when I took the camera out of my bag outside, the cable could have fallen out. Crap. I retraced my steps from last night, hoping to find it someplace, but no luck. So I went to the front desk to see if anyone had turned a cable in. Again, no luck. Poo.

I went back to my room to google “Target” and “Radio Shack” in hopes of finding one near the hotel where I could buy a new cable this morning. As the connection crawled through to reveal a Target about a half-mile from here, the phone rang. It was the front desk.

Someone just turned in my cable.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 10th, 2007 at 9:09 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.