candyland: (Default)
Candyland ([personal profile] candyland) wrote2005-01-22 02:25 pm
Entry tags:

An interesting evening...

As I've said in a couple of prior entries, there's never really a dull moment in RA-dom. The events of last night-through-this morning are a prime example. Let me stell you the tory...

On breaks, there's always an RA on duty. I've got the first two days of this break--which means I get to go home tomorrow afternoon. Yayness! But anyway, so I've got the duty phone and a short list of stuff that needs to get done. We sometimes call it 'babysitting the building.'

Well, last night I did my rounds like usual--we just turn off lights, check bathrooms, check fire extinguishers...you get the idea. Well, Fridays are party nights, so rounds happen at ten, midnight, and two AM. One of my friends has been on a trip in Egypt for the last couple weeks, and she stopped by at one-thirty to say hi. It was great to see her again, and she had tons of stories.

Hung with her for half an hour, then did rounds. Crawled into bed and put my headphones on for about twenty mintes--that's my ritual. When I'm getting ready to go to bed, the headphones go on and I listen to music for a while. It just helps me unwind and relax. I finally dozed off at about two-thirty, three-ish in the morning.

Imagine my surprise when I wake up to a knock on my door. I was really kind of confused, because I knew we weren't meeting until eleven for brunch and room checks, but it was still totally dark outside. The sun usually starts coming up around seven, seven-thirty-ish at this time of year. So I crawl out of bed and stumble to the door, wondering if somebody got locked out of their room or something. Imagine my surprise when it's my supervisor, Gretchen. She's the RD here. I'm even more surprised to see that she's holding a candle--a direct policy violation (Gods, did that sound as nerdy as I thought it did? Probably...).

She then informs me that the power is out. I glance over at my microwave clock, and sure enough, it's totally off. So she asks me if I have my flashlight (part of our 'RA kit' of sorts), because we needed to do rounds through the building. With the power out, the fire alarms are off, so we have to act as the fire alarms by continually walking through the very dark, very quiet, very creepy building to make sure everything's as it should be.

We had some massively strong winds overnight--they started last night. There were gusts that reached sixty miles per hour. Welcome to Iowa winters. Anyway, that's what did it--something got blown over.

So let's recap: I was up 'till two-thirty AM doing rounds and RA stuff. I then was woken up at SIX AM to wander the building in search of fires. I know it was six AM because I grabbed the duty phone on the way out, and it has the time on the display screen. Also, I am not a morning person. So we walked around the building about five times, then sat in the main lounge and watched the sun start to rise. Then we went down and checked the boiler room (I'd like to take this opportunity to say how much I really don't like the dark and stuff...)

But finally, Gretch sent me back to my room, saying that she'd get one of the other RAs to do rounds every hour (since the sun had come up, we only needed them once an hour). So I crawled back into bed at about a quarter past seven...and was awakened again at ten by my alarm. We were meeting at eleven for brunch.

I rolled over and went back to sleep. Woke up at five to eleven because someone knocked on my door. Didn't bother getting dressed or anything--just pulled on a trusty sweatshirt and wandered down for food. All four of us RA's still in the building, plus Gretchen, had ended up getting woken up to do a stint on fire-watch, so we were all fairly tired.

Room checks went blessedly fast, and now it's naptime for me! So yeah, that was my night. I swear, one time we had to do closing stuff, we had a fire alarm go off. It was about ten degrees outside, and I wasn't wearing shoes. That was soooooooooo [NOT] fun. This time, the power goes out for five hours.

Never a dull moment...

Goodnight!
~ Candy-chan ^_^

[identity profile] kaitodoushi.livejournal.com 2005-01-22 10:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Ick... Well, at least you got sleep spaced in there! I woke up about 20 minutes ago... (4:20) XD. And yes, the sun does rise around seven... *knows from seeing it*

[identity profile] kyteaura.livejournal.com 2005-01-23 01:19 am (UTC)(link)
I love your icon!!! *rapes it*

[identity profile] kaitodoushi.livejournal.com 2005-01-23 03:18 am (UTC)(link)
o_O ... Thanks? (lol)

That stinks!

[identity profile] fire-genki.livejournal.com 2005-01-23 01:37 am (UTC)(link)
Man, you got it rough. Don't give up though! ^_^

If I

[identity profile] vixieangel.livejournal.com 2005-01-23 04:19 am (UTC)(link)
If I was there it really would have been wild. No Shoes + Snow + Me = .....NAKED SNOW ANGELS!! WWWWWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! I really need to lay off the sugar! And my hair is still pink:P

[identity profile] blink1-82.livejournal.com 2005-01-23 07:37 pm (UTC)(link)
You know...you weren't the only one who had to do that..I wasn't one of them but I was awake when the power went out...it was 5 am and it was not fun after I got done watching Shawn of the dead. it was not good. Well I don't think it was at least.

Me

[identity profile] spirit-sage-333.livejournal.com 2005-01-23 08:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Bleh, I'm sorry kid. Maybe you should buy your soul back from them next year to avoid such problems :) Get some sleep and have a safe trip home!