OMG

Yesterday morning I woke up at 6:00 so that I could leave by 7:00 to get to Downey by 8:30. At 6:55 I sat down to my bowl of cereal. I heard a buzzing down in the wall. What in the world? I walked into my mini hallway. I noticed that my vanity lights were flickering. What? I turned the lights off. I opened the breaker box and saw SPARKS. Heart rate instantly jumped up. I quickly flipped half the switches. The buzzing stopped. Relief. Then I started hunting around for my the Apartment Office number. I was in such a state that I wasn't making much sense to myself. Suddenly I had to pee, so I thought I might be able to think better if my bladder wasn't full. I accidentally flipped the bathroom room switch which instantly began to flicker and I heard the buzzing in the wall again. I no longer had to pee. OMG! I went back to the breaker box which was sparking once again, so I threw the other half of the switches.
I finally located the office number and called. The woman that answered didn't seem as alarmed as I was. She asked if there was smoke. When I said no, she said she would see IF someone could come check it out after hours. I let her know that my freezer was defrosting at the moment and I would lose all my stuff. I swear I heard her let out a sigh when she said she would work on it.
Completely freaked out, I loaded up jewelry, computer and some clothes. My parents had an electrical fire where they lost a bunch of stuff. I would have loaded up more but I coxed myself out of being WORST CASE SCENARIO GIRL and let it go with what I had.
At about 7:30, I was calm enough to get in the car. I was deciding if I really wanted to go for training or not. Maybe I needed to be near the apartment. But then I decided that I would do no one any good being near the apartment. If it burned it burned. The training had to be done and I might as well be at a long Power Point reading day with a frazzled mind than actually trying to do work. I got in the car about my coffee to make my way to Downey about 50 miles away. I knew I would be late and since it took me 10 minutes to make it to the first stop light from my apartment which is less than a quarter of a mile, I knew that I was really not going to make it on time.
At 8:00 I called the library and asked the Assistant to send Bob an email to let him know I was going to be late. I was at Freeway cruising speed which was about 30 miles an hour. Then, I made a mistake. Just past downtown there is a jumble of freeways. The 5 cuts down to two lanes from five but it isn't the right two or the left two, it is somewhere in between. I thought I was in the far lane to stay on the 5 so I just followed the road, but I wasn't and ended up on the 10. Once I got off I was in Vernon--where ever the Hell that is. I couldn't find my way back to the freeway. Eventually I ran across a surface street that I knew ran near where I wanted to be, got out my handy Thomas Guide and found myself. About 30 minutes later I ended up at LHQ (Library Head Quarters)--a full hour late.
On the way in I called the Apartment Office and spoke with Marvin the head Groundskeeper. I explained the problem. He said that sometimes breakers are thrown when there is too many things connected. Exasperated, I explained that that was the problem the breaker didn't throw--it was sparking. Oh, he said, let me go check it out. Yes, I responded, please do.
Later I called and yes, the other guy saw the sparks too. Somehow a wire wasn't grounded and was shorting out. Fun. He fixed it, turned my lights back on and I came home to a safe apartment, feeling a bit sheepish as I got my stuff out of my car.