Little battles

People who know me know I like to work irregular hours.

Take tonight, for example. Having just crested 7 pm, I'm still here in the Medical Center, a fact I'm perfectly comfortable with. After all, I come in later than most people and expect to stay later than most people. (I always thought the worst of Ann Arbor comes out during morning rush hour: inch-thick ice on windshields, sardine-packed parking lots, students crossing the street willy-nilly, &c.)

Anyway, lately my routine has been disturbed by this: an incessant hammering taking place one floor up as the 7th floor of Medical Science Building II gets remodeled. The hammering has been starting every night around 6:30 pm, and the thin floors add freakishly to the effect. Bits of exploding concrete cinder block fall with localized high-pitched staccato. Sometimes they sound right above me, sometimes behind me to one side. Sometimes they start at one corner of the ceiling and skitter to the opposite corner.

Add to these plinks the continuous pounding of the sledge hammers echoing through the floors and you have what I imagine Hell sounds like, sans the screaming.

In an effort to combat this auditory menace, I've started up with the ambient music again, usually either Drone Zone on SomaFM or one of the loops on iSerenity. I can't be entirely sure I'm winning. Ambient noise sort of sounds like another version of Hell, one with repeating noises and indistinguishable murmurs. Maybe like what a baby hears in the womb. Wouldn't that be ironic if the sounds of Hell were the same as the sounds of the womb?

Tack this on to yesterday's post, and -- oh, great -- now I'm seeing things and hearing things.

UPDATE (9:58 pm, 12/11): The hammering has stopped now but been replaced by the sounds of a circular saw and chunks of metal hitting the floor. I can smell something burning, perhaps the coating on the metal as it aerosolizes from the friction. What's this? Yes, I feel... yes, slightly dizzy, a little light-headed.... Mother, the purple in the car went, shoe bake. In a gyve the silver mist on heads of state. Feeling so sleepy.... I'm just gonna rest my eyes....

UPDATE 2 (1:53 am, 12/12): Well, I've come to and the place is silent. Either the guys upstairs are on a break, or I've died and somehow ended up in a place that looks exactly like where I was. Now that's a scary proposition of the afterlife: it's exactly like your current life without all the other participants.

UPDATE 3 (3:10 am, 12/12): Okay, being here is officially scary again. Hammering has recommenced, except this time it's much, much closer. Debris has started falling from the ceiling, and somehow a crumpled-up package of Salem Lights has fallen through the ceiling onto my colleague JCR's desk. I will take a picture to document.


A horror story is running through my head, one vaguely remembered about a student on North Campus, probably an engineering student, who came in one morning to find a slab of concrete had crushed his desk! Seems the workers had made an error the night before. If I don't make it through the night, it was nice knowing you all! One thing is certain: I am no longer asleep!

UPDATE 4 (3:33 am, 12/12): A large section of PVC tubing has just come crashing down through the ceiling, onto JCR's desk and then onto the floor. JCR's desk is now covered in all kinds of industrial detritus. I will take a picture to document.


For the moment the hammering has stopped, but I'm wary of where it will start up again. If I make it through this, remind me to tell you all about the time the tornado blew the roof off the house I was renting in Louisiana in 1999!