Just let me roast.

Dignity. The last word that should come to your mind when thinking about university-owned housing. True, it was easier & cheaper than finding my own flat in Brighton. True, our flats are self-contained, and, for the most part, self-sustained. And there's that weekly cleaning service. It didn't seem like much of a sacrifice, then, that every now & then a pair of enthusiastic & charmingly British RAs barge into our flat to put up signs about floor meetings, pub crawls, etc (my non-attached female roommates come out of their rooms whenever they hear these male voices; makes me glad I came with my own!)...

Until the 9 a.m. fire drill. I was already awake (thank God), and getting my breakfast ready: I was hungry, and those scrambled eggs looked promising, I tell ya. The second that alarm hit its high wail, I knew it was a drill. So I did the smart thing, and turned off the stove, and took my pan off the burner (no sense setting off a fire alarm for real with breakfast-smoke). I already have a sweater and shoes on (just ask about the dirty carpet), so I just lock up my door & head out with my roommates (in various stages of sleepiness, with the exception of Evo [our one man], who had early class, and Efwah, who is still MIA). We get outside, then, only to be chastised by a woman holding a remote alarm trigger (the cause of the evil) for not making it out in less than three minutes (I'd like to add that I live on the 5th floor; or in the U.S., that'd be the 6th floor - that's a lotta stairs). "Should've just let me roast," I mutter sarcastically, not, I have to add, to the unappreciation of my similarly grumpy flatmates.

And when I get back upstairs, my eggs? Burnt. I eat them anyway, watching the sea, which I planned to write about this morning. It's calm today; yesterday, angry and gray and flinging its white frothy arms against the stones. I like its moods. So like a woman like me.