November 30, 2003
Two adventures in three days!
We'll start with the more tame, less dangerous adventure. My friend Kelly (kmcardle), his wife, and their son were trucking to Florida last week, and stopped in Atlanta for a night to sleep and such. While here, we decided to do the dinner thing and hang out for an evening.
They stayed on one of the higher floors in the hotel. So the three of us are riding the elevator down, when around the third floor the elevator started shuddering and the lights started flickering, ending when the elevator banged to a stop close to the second floor. Pressing buttons didn't help. Gerri called the front desk using the emergency intercom, and informed them we were stuck. The front desk clerk kindly dispatched maintenance to get us out.
After a while of not being rescued, we called down to the desk again to let them know that we were still stuck, and if they could call ahead to Applebee's to get us a table. She said she'd get maintenance on it again, and call the restaurant.
After an even longer while of not being rescued, the intercom beeped to life, and the woman at the front desk informed us of two things. A) Applebee's currently has no wait, so there's no need to hold a table; and B) maintenance can't rescue us, so the fire department had to be called. Fantastic!
After discussions of who would be eaten first, dreams about elevators, and wagers on when we would be rescued, the trusty yellow-suited firemen arrived and opened the doors. We ended up being stopped about two feet below the 2nd floor. And then we ate dinner.
The next adventure is much less amusing.
Early this morning, I was asleep in bed, like most people. Suddenly, at about quarter to five, I'm awakened with a jump by an extremely loud bang, followed by four more extremely loud subsequent bangs. It sounded extraordinarily close, almost like it was inside my apartment. Now very much awake, I was lying in bed trying to ponder what action I should take. Eventually I got up, quietly walked into my living room, and took out my gun. I keep it unloaded, but I figured it would still definitely intimidate someone. After I had my gun in hand, I started turning on lights. With the lights on, I put three shots in the magazine and immediately started systematically searching my apartment.
My search turned up nothing, so I called the police, and told the operator that five really loud bangs had woken me up, and I had no idea what they were or where they originated. Two officers were on the scene in about 5 minutes (kudos to CCPD for the quick response), and asked me a few questions. They asked if I checked the apartment out, and I said yes, however I neglected to check the porch. They were good enough to do as such, then said they would search in and around the building. I never heard back from them.
So this afternoon, after taking a trip to the shooting range with James, I got home, cleaned my gun, and had an idea. I walked into the hallway and knocked on my neighbor's door. We said hello in passing but had never actually met, so hey, this might be as good a time as any. He opened the door and I said hello, and said that I had a question.
"At around quarter to five this morning, did you hear like five really loud bangs?"
Without a bit of hesitation, he immediately and excitedly answered "YES!" Turns out his wife had slept through it (and assumed he had dreamed it), but the first one woke him right the hell up as well, and he immediately jumped to the window to check things out. He's pretty sure it was a series of gunshots. I told him my story, and he said he appreciated me calling the police since he and his wife, along with me are the only ones in our building. So I finally introduced myself as Chris and told him if he ever needed anything to just knock on my door, and he offered the same thing. It took gunshots for me to meet my neighbor Louis. Heh.
In any case, I'm now going to keep my gun hot-loaded and in the drawer next to my bed instead of unloaded in a case two rooms away.
(17:38)
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