Well, today I finally have something entertaining to write about! A BOMB THREAT!

Here's the story that I picked up from office gossip: Around noon, a mysterious package showed up on the fourth floor of my building. Nobody knew how it had gotten there and it had a "suspicious" address. (One has to wonder why they'd leave a suspicious package on the fourth floor when the chancellor's office is known to all to be on the fifth. Maybe they were afraid to brave the lobby area?) Anyway, presumably someone called the cops, they started looking, then asked the folks on the fourth and fifth floors to go down to the lobby and wait. Oh, and "take the elevator." Which made people wonder if they were supposed to go down FAST or if that was on crack and they should really take the stairs.

They sit out there for a long-ass time. Around 2 I go out to go to the bathroom and see this mob of people hanging around and yapping, and I wonder what the hell it is. I come back in, ask the front desk chica and she says it's a bomb threat, etc. I go, "Well, huh, if it's a bomb threat, I'm surprised they haven't booted us all out of the building. Huh. Guess we got lucky, eh?" and I go back to my work.

Around 3:30, the police get done X-raying the package, and all panic breaks loose, I guess. We're told that everyone has to leave the building ASAP and they are sending us home early to boot. We're not allowed near the front of the building at all, but are sent out the back and told that we have to go as far as the schmancypants performing art center area (i.e. across the street and kinda far off from the building). By now I've missed the bus to go home and taking a later one would mean I'd have a half-hour at home before having to leave to go to my first beading class, so I figure I'll stay on campus.

I hang around and watch the show for awhile. They block off the circle behind the building so no one can get through, cop cars mill about, a photographer I knew from the newspaper shows up and starts getting pics of the bewildered crowd. I fear I'm in the front of them, standing around in my fur hat and feather boa scarf, so I may end up on the front page tomorrow. I wonder if anyone at the paper would recognize me in the pic? (Photog didn't seem to, but it's been a long while.) Eventually HOD and my boss come by and both tell me to go home, so I give up cop-watching. I call Dave and Mom just in case either of them sees the news and freaks. Much to my amazement, Dave was totally calm about this- funny considering how he used to be so wigged out at the idea of someone blowing up my building and I was all "yeah, right."

I asked HOD before I left if I had to check in before going to work or something tomorrow and he said no, he figured all would be well by then. And as far as I could tell the building wasn't a hulk of smoking rubble when I left class tonight, so I guess all is well.

I dearly hope this actually makes the UCD paper (I assume it'll make my old employer's) for a change, I'll be interested to read it. Kinda excited, even.

Ironically, I'd e-mailed Jess earlier that day about something odd and she'd written back that she was glad she didn't have wild stuff happening to her all the time. I wrote back tonight with "So, didya hear about the bomb threat?" Hee.

More later- I had other stuff to write about today, but I think a bomb threat should get an entry all to itself, you know?

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