Friday, November 11, 2016

Emergency! Emergence!

I had a bit of a torrid week and hopefully next week will be a bit more restful.

Early on Tuesday morning , at approximately 1.45am the fire alarm went off in the Shopping Centre.  It was very loud and woke everybody up.  After about 15 minutes of being sound blasted I decided that maybe I was the last man standing and that I was missing from a headcount so I wandered downstairs to see what was going on .  Please understand that us residents have been told to ignore fire alarms from the shopping centre although, since it is right underneath me I'd rather get out with the cats before the flames work upwards and engulf the apartment block.

Anyway, there was no-one but me,  an Otis van and a man fixing the roller doors to the carpark.  The Fire brigade arrived just after I got downstairs (using the lift as no-one had mentioned fire) and about 15 minutes later the alarm stopped.  I eventually got back to sleep but some didn't and in the morning I posted on the Community board to ask what we should do in a case like this.  It turns out that the only other person to mention it to Management was a cleaner but there was a lot of feedback once the ball got rolling and it turns out that it was a burst water pipe.  It has been suggested that some sort of evacuation plan should be posted since I think that I am the only one who actually knows where we should gather for the head count.

I was supposed to have two clients at COTA on Thursday but only one turned up and I found that Microsoft, which I knew had updated itself the evening before, had removed the ability to select a Home Page and opens on a Microsoft News page but with a search field should one wish to progress from Microsoft's idea of what world news interests me.  I felt like an idiot being unable to set up google as my client's home page but it will be a good reason to show her how to create tiles as she brought her own computer and will be doing so for the rest of her lessons.

I was so tired that afternoon that I bought myself some Lindt chocolates, ate the lot and climbed under the duvet with Parsifal and slept for the afternoon.  Sometime during the afternoon Poppy joined us on the bed which was a happy event.  Poppy is favouring her left front leg at the moment and Parsifal has been harassing her.  To distract him I played a Miniscule DVD which the cats both love and that worked for a while but eventually I had to plug in the Happy Juice and today all is peace and quiet with Poppy sleeping and Parsifal super-cuddly.

I have bought some cotton cord to replace the tassels which Parsifal ate when he was a kitten and was eating anything which could be sucked first.  He took very hard to being weaned and for his first year of life he consumed shoelaces, apron strings, a leash and half the tassels on my Iranian tablecloth.  I never worried too much about the digestible things but he had to have two ultrasounds after swallowing the nylon leashes.  Fortunately he eventually vomited both of them up and no harm was done.  Thankfully for my peace of mind he seems to have got over that rather scary phase but I still tuck my shoelaces into my shoes when I take them off.

And, of course, the excitement this last week has been the USA Presidential Election.

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