a dark and stormy night

I'd finally gotten to bed a decent hour last night and was just falling asleep when I was abruptly awoken. I sat up extremely disoriented, not even sure which direction my bed was facing. And for the first few minutes I was awake, that was what I concerned myself with. Why, when woken suddenly, is that a concern at all and even more puzzling- why does it take preference over the bigger question "what the hell just woke me up?" Regardless, it did and for the next several seconds I sat on my bed trying to orient in my mind the pieces of furniture in my room. When I finally realized my door was to the right, I was able to actually listen. Someone was insistently ringing our doorbell. This is not an action that could go unnoticed because our doorbell just happens to sound like a cross between a old timey alarm clock, a school bell and a fire alarm, and the presser was pushing it with quite some vigor. I was a little uneasy since I knew it was definitely our apartment doorbell and not the buzzer from the street to the inside of the building. I knew this because about a week ago we came home to find the lock to our outside door completely gone. Now to get into our building you don't need a key, just a firm bump of the shoulder.

I sat still for a moment longer after it stopped trying to build a little courage to go check the peep hole. People have buzzed our door by accident before thinking our button was the light but this seemed way too deliberate. I didn't hear anyone else getting up and since my door being the closest to the main door, I decided to suck it up and go check. Then, straight out of a cheesy horror movie, I opened my door and at that very moment there was a strike of lightning and a giant crash of thunder just as my roommate also appeared at the end of the hallway. Seeing each other just as the lightening lit the room was truly terrifying and we both screamed so whoever was outside would be absolutely sure there was someone in the apartment and they were awake. And close. We tiptoed to the door and I apprehensively looked out. Well, we saw no one. Pretty anticlimactic yes, but in the amount of time it took us to get the balls to actually go to the door, even an angry mafia leader probably would have gotten bored and left.

And that got us right in the mood to go to the Serial Killer Museum today. It wasn't covered by our museum passes but we went anyway. Pretty disturbing, gruesome, cheesy (in the way any kind of reenactment is), and kind of fascinating. Complete with audio guide and mini videos at each little station, we learned about Ted Bundy, Jack the Ripper, Blue Beard, Charles Manson... etc. All the biggies.

And Then when we got home, I discovered my lovely friends had set up a mini surprise birthday party for me. It was a few days ago and we went to dinner but not everyone could come since some people had evening internships. But this late birthday had balloons, cake, toilet paper streamers, and candles that sparkled, smelled horrid and wouldn't blow out. It was pretty adorable.

Anyway- only one full week left and then off to travel all over the place for a few weeks. Sa-weet.