Sunday, October 4, 2009

FIRE

Friday night I saw the Toy Story double feature in 3D! I definitely loved those movies as a child and watched the first one at least 50 times (because it was my little brother's favorite movie), but I probably haven't seen either one in 7-8 years so it was almost like watching them again for the first time. I was really surprised how good they were still this time around as an adult. There were a lot of jokes that went completely over my head when I was little.

I went with Eia and Justin and Kayley and Denis and a few of Kayley's other friends, and it was $14 well spent.

Friday night we were supposed to play Mario Party with our housemates, but instead, Eia and I stayed up until about 3 in the morning (I have no idea how this happened) looking online for various pieces of our Halloween costumes. I now have everything I need to be Angelica Pickles aside from some orange socks, purple shoes, and a doll that looks like Cynthia. Basically I just need to track down a blonde Barbie doll, of which I don't have.

Saturday morning, about 4 hours later, I woke up (hating my alarm clock) to drive into Issaquah to see my brother march in the Salmon Days parade. He plays trumpet in the band. I also just get kind of warm and fuzzy watching the parade each year because I marched in it every year from 7th grade up to my senior year of high school. When my brother went by in his (dorky/awesome) band uniform, I did the standard "Wooooo Nick Horner!!!" older sister embarrassing thing that's expected of me, and luckily my brother is a good sport and just laughed behind his trumpet and kept walking.

Then their band director saw me and his eyes widened and, while still marching, said to me, "I still owe you like a THOUSAND dollars or something!" before continuing on down the street. To explain, awhile ago they entered this competition by submitting a video set to a song they played, for this local radio station thing. The first prize was $10,000 for their band program. I may or may not have mentioned the video on fiveawesomegirls and got a lot of my subscribers to vote for them. I am obviously not claiming that I alone got them to win, but I definitely sent a lot of people in their direction and at the end of the competition, my old high school was handed a check for $10,000.
It was very exciting. And it was nice to see him and be acknowledged, because I had honestly kind of forgotten about it, and this is a HUGE DEAL to them because our high school never had thaaaat much money for the arts.

Anyway, I felt even more warm and fuzzy after that exchange. Sometimes YouTube makes me feel like a superhero, and I'm glad I can use my powers for good. xD Oh I'm a loser.

That afternoon I ducked into my work, because the theatre that employs me is right there on the parade route. My coworkers were really happy to see me, especially my manager Coral who I would consider to be one of my best friends honestly. Eia was there as well since she teaches dance there, and we hung out in the box office until 2, since we decided to see the new show playing there, "Chasing Nicolette". I missed the opening because I was still in London.

THEN. Last night we were at home, hanging out in the living room with our housemates, complaining that our Saturday night was boring. Eia and I were jealous that half our friends were at a Sci-Fi Con in St. Louis and the other half at the Sidewalk show in New York, when SUDDENLY. Justin was in the kitchen and we heard him shouting, so we ran to see what was going on - out the back window, all we could see was GIANT ORANGE FLAMES.

I have never seen a group of people go so quickly into panic mode.

We ran outside, started grabbing buckets, filling them with water - the apartment building across from us in the back alley was ON FIRE. There was an old couch that someone had left by the back door and it was completely engulfed in flames, and it was spreading really quickly up the wall of the entire complex. A girl ran over from another house with a fire extinguisher, and when it ran out, got completely hysterical. Justin was still running back and forth with buckets of water. Finally he took our recycle bin, just dumped the contents on the floor of our kitchen, and handed it to Eia and Tyler's cousin who ran upstairs to fill it in the bathtub. All this time he was on the phone with 911.

People were spilling out of their houses at this point, and I realized no one from the actual apartment that was on FIRE was outside. Myself and a few other peoplee started shouting "Hello? Who lives in this apartment? You need to come out right now!" There were no fire alarms. Why were there no fire alarms?

Finally, finally people started coming outside, completely bewildered. I met a lot of my neighbors that I had never seen before, all standing huddled and confused, clutching their laptops.

The fire was almost subdued at this point. The flames were down but it was smoking and smoldering and everyone was really scared.

Then the firemen showed up and took over.

Everything is okay, but the wall is blackened, the couch is nonexistent, and at one point during the night a bunch of us just got completely blasted with a fire hose because we happened to be standing in the wrong spot.

Needless to say, Justin went out that night and bought new batteries for our smoke alarms, because we realized in the midst of everything that NONE of our smoke alarms are even on right now because they were all beeping annoyingly due to low batteries. So that's fixed.

Anyway. Later on, we laughed about how earlier, we'd wished for a more exciting Saturday night. Be careful what you wish for, man.

24 comments:

iHeart said...

Haha something close to that happened to me and my friends. We were watching TV really late,it was snowing really hard and we were utterly bored and my friend said "Ugh, I wish something really exciting would happen right now." Almost at that exact moment, my sister's cat started giving birth. Then roads were so snowy that the vet couldn't come over and we all had to help deliver 7 kittens. After that, I will never wish for a more exciting evening.

Unknown said...

Thank you for updating your blog I love your blog

Ana said...

Whoa, that was intense! Glad everything's okay, that must have been a huge fright!

Emily said...

You went to the Toy Story 3-D? I'm so jealous!

I'm glad that nothing too serious happened in the fire! Things like that are kind of cool, because you get to see everyone coming together to try and accomplish something (like putting the fire out). I don't know ... maybe it's just cool to me. And you got to meet some of your neighbors ... even if it wasn't the best of times.

Your job sounds really fun, you're lucky that you get to work with all of your friends!

loveacrosstheocean said...

you're a cute older sister, I definitely do the same thing at sporting events with my little sister. I'm worried for my nonexistent kids. sigh.
<3

Phyllis said...

i'm in a low mood right now. and this blog made me laugh and smile. thanks, kristina :)

said...

Damn, that fire story. Haha. Epic.

Urban has like $10-15 purple sneakers and Journey's show store has bright socks sometimes :)

I looove you. xx

Cat said...

Someone set a school on fire in Atlanta on Friday. It's so weird. My friends school is gone. Fires are scary.

whatzedeuce said...

What an exciting weekend! I'm so glad it stayed overcast for that parade. It was tough enough with such a fast song.

Most of the trumpets were pretty wiped when we got to you, so hopefully it didn't sound awful.

The Vagabond said...

Wow. You're a hero Kristina! That is pretty epic and it sounds pretty scary. At least it makes for a good story and no one was hurt (except for the poor couch and apartment wall) so that's good.

Jade said...

I wish i could take my 1 year old to see the Toy Story 3D..but there's no way he would sit still in the theater..even though it's his favorite movie too! And OH MY GOSH will you make a great Angelica! I'm excited to see that happen!

Basic Humanity said...

You really are a hero dude! Not only can you raise money for bands but you seem to instinctively put out fires. Congrats to you and your housemtes.

Basic Humanity said...

You really are a hero dude! Not only can your raise money for poor bands you put our fires apparently instinctively. Congrats to you and your housemates.

alyson said...

The things that happen in your life...crazy.

Nicole said...

Something a little bit similar happened to me when I was younger. I was really bored at school and immediately after I said to one of friends that I wished something exciting would happen, the fire alarm went off! I think it was a false alarm, but it was pretty exciting at the time :)

ginger jones said...

My dad is a fireman and every place my sister and I move into he asks if there are smoke alarms and comes and checks them and puts new ones in then repetitvely quizes us on how we would get out of the house, haha. Yet, when I was cooking taco shells in the oven and they caught on fire I had no idea how to extinguish it or how to handle it. He got so much shit from all the other firemen in our town and one of his friends e-mailed his entire station in another town letting them all know haha. The following morning our letterbox was FILLED with fire safety and recruitment pamphlets, haha.

KaraDawlish said...

That was a fun concert! I swear liane get's smaller everytime i see her... Sounds like you had a prerty eventful night too. Good thing everyones okay

Stephanie said...

Oh wow, such a story!
Saturday night I was at my sisters apartment building. It's 11 stories high and it was about 10 at night, and the alarm starts going off. and I'm like "aw do we really have to go downstairs?" so after a couple minutes we finally put our shoes on and head down 11 flights of stairs, or more. Four fire trucks come up, the whole street is lined with people.

Apparently some lady who is really sick had an "episode" and fell asleep with the stove on. When we went back in we could all smell it.

Thats really dangerous!

And the lady came out of her apartment, and some other lady yelled at her "you did it again!" and then she tackled her, it was a huge fight.

kinda funny.
and long comment. I'm sorry

comelygrace said...

Oh my gosh, good job on helping save that burning apartment complex!! Exciting happenings, indeed.

seurat2 said...

Wow, that was a blog and a half. When I was studying journalism we were taught never to bury the lead. You just buried the lead. (Although you got the headline right.) YOU WERE IN A FIRE! So glad it turned out okay and that you replaced the smoke alarm batteries. I'd comment on the rest OF your blog, something about going to movies and stopping by work, but really all I can remember is you were in a FIRE. Here's to blogs with slightly less dangerous excitement happening.

Chelsea said...

wow! winning money through YT AND fire fighting! you ARE a superhero! both online and irl. :D

Alex Dahlberry said...

Hah, that sure does sound exciting.
I don't really have anything to say, I just wanted to comment so you knew I was reading it. :P

-alex

Jessica Bergman "TheOtherJessica" said...

Oh man! You guys are heroes!!!!

Keira said...

honestly, the most exciting things seem to happen to you! also, what happened to the whole alaska thing?