Crazy...

It had started raining this morning, very lightly, but there was a lot of wind. I had on my raincoat, which is practically useless as it has no sleeves and a cape that, if there is any wind, will blow over your head and cover your face. Meanwhile, you have to hold your hat with your free hand so it doesn't fly off...so, you walk with one hand on your head, a cape flying in your face and your naked arms and books, if you have them, along with your knees on down exposed to the rain.

I got to class today in Lincoln Hall, one of the newer buildings on post (I think it opened in the sixties or seventies, but I'm not sure). Instead of having class in the second basement as we normally do, we were on the first floor in the conference room. It's a cool room with a huge oak table and leather chairs, so class was looking up.

As class went on, the wind picked up and you could hear it winding its way through the openings throughout the building. About thirty minutes into class, there was a huge gust of wind and what sounded like a car crash (a small one)...a brief second later, maybe two or three seconds, the window in the back of the room crashed. I was convinced it was a terrorist attack and that I hadn't been nearly vigilant enough. (Could it have been the shady guy who serves food in the mess hall? Or maybe it was the middle aged woman I saw walking on the street...I knew something was suspicious about her crazy knitted sweater)

As it turns out, it was nothing other than a bad case of poor engineering. In fact, the roof had blown off, about a ten by thirty foot section of it. The whole building started to sound crazy as wind whipped its way from the ceiling down through the basement via a vast network of narrow stairwells. Eventually, the fire alarms went on and we were told to go back to our rooms, but "to use the front exit as the roof is less likely to fall on you there."