leaving work early

Our building is shaped like a "U". A big ugly U. People only occupy the main section, the wings were basically left for storage recently. To the immediate North of our building there is a new building going up. (Not for us)

I have a window on the North side of the building, facing the new construction. Just under my window is a gas main for the building. The past 2 days, they have been pulling out all the old asphalt in the parking lot, and leveling and grading things for the new parking lot.

This afternoon, they started taking one of the wings of our building down. The thing is in sections, you can see the support pillars for the building from the outside. They started with the 2nd section in, after about 10 minutes of banging on it with a backhoe, that section and the 1st section caved in. They stopped as if they didn't really expect the roof of the 1st section to come down like it did.

This afternoon, right outside my window, they had a little backhoe, and a bobcat and were trying to get the asphalt out around the gas main. First they started banging on it with the backhoe. This made us all nervous, because they were just barely missing the gas main. Then they got a guy with a sledgehammer to start hitting the asphalt next to the pipe that went into the ground while the backhoe banged out the beat next to him. This was also the point where they made it to the halfway point in the back of the wing.

This is the point in time I decided it was time for me to go home. I didn't know if the demolition of the wing would cause a domino, knocking things down on top of me, or if the clowns digging out the asphalt would blow me to kingdom come, but I figured it was just a matter of time before one of the 2 things happened. I heard after I left that they had supposedly turned off the gas to the building, but I assume they mean there at the gas main, and those guys were not treating it with the respect it deserved.

I don't plan to work from my office tomorrow, Thursday I am in the Data Center for a load test, and Friday I am watching the girls for Tara. Hopefully the explosions and destruction are all over by Monday...