Thursday

Today was not my typical Thursday. 

At 2:30, as I was just wrapping up one of my staff's annual reviews, I heard my phone buzz.  As I walked out the door I saw an e-mail from my lab manager, "Our vault smells like something is burning".  Great.  I dashed over to find an overwhelmingly strong smell of burning plastic coming from our collection room.  Our security called the fire department, who luckily are our neighbors down the street.  The entire entourage arrived, in full gear with their axes in toe.  As we evacuated the building, I hesitated to leave the storage room unattended.  Number one rule- don't leave people alone with your collections.  I could just imagine 6 giant men in their giant yellow suites bumping and knocking over fragile artifacts as they made their way through our narrow aisles.  I must have hesitated too long because I got a stern look from one of the firefighters.  I went outside to see the entire department out on the deck watching the exciting Thursday event.  As I stood there I overheard someone say, "The collections are on fire!"  Oh the joys of a chatty office.

Luckily there was no fire, just smoke.  A fan in the HVAC system broke and was creating the burning smell. Luckily too, the smoke had not reached our vault yet.  I couldn't have imagined if our fire suppression system had gone off. Even more lucky, the A/C guy was just down the street and was able to come and replace the fan!

Staff began wandering away back to their desks after realizing that the building was not going to explode and that the collections were not on fire after all.  When we got the all clear, I hurried back inside and looked through our aisles, making sure all was safe and sound.  All was well again in the quiet vault.

Fire fighters bravely assessing the invisible fire