Under the Arch

I wore a new pair of sandals to work for my shift today. Can we say stupid? And ouch?

So, I was already running late to work today (forgot to eat lunch, had to stop at 7-11 for a soda and a snickers bar. mmm, snickers!) and, of course when I exited the interstate onto Lindbergh, I was unpleased to see bumper to bumper traffic. As I was inching forward, trying to make it the FEET to the mall entrance, firetrucks were shoving their way through to get to Toys R Us, which already had a couple of firetrucks and police cars out front. (Hmm, car fire?) I inched forward and snickered at the morons who kept getting in the way and yelling at the asshat who nearly hit the woman in front of me. I finally noticed the blinking traffic light ahead that was causing the backup (why, yes, I AM observant!)
As I watched, more and more police cars were weaving their way through the intersection, confusing people and running around like chickens with their heads cut off and in the back of my mind I heard the beep. beep. beep. beep. of the opening credits of 24. I wouldn't have been surprised if Keifer Sutherland showed up and commandeered my car (except that it is a piece of shit and not exactly car chase material).
Now I was curious and I noticed more police cars and firetrucks in front of Best Buy and again across the street in front of Macy's. Oh, it's ON now, nobody messes with MY mall, even if I have to call CTU myself, Jack Bauer better get his ass down here and fix it! At this point, I'm half expecting to be turned away from the mall all together, but other than another police car at the entrance I use, trying to look all official, nothing happened and I walked right in.
I sent a twitter about this unusual scene and tried to find out what was going on. No one inside seemed to be concerned and the only sign that anything was happening was the closed doors of Macy's and the darkness inside. I walked up to a man sitting at the cookie stand and asked him what was going on. This is what he said. "Oh, the power went out and they're trying to figure out what happened." W. T. F.??!! A power failure caused all that drama going on outside?! I was expecting a bomb threat or anthrax or something, but power failure?! How does that make any sense?!
Disappointed and suspicious, I went into work and related the depressing tale. And then my cell phone battery died, so I couldn't even tell anyone what I had learned. I still think the whole thing was fishy and I'm willing to bet that Jack was in Macy's torturing a terrorist. Makes more sense than a power failure in three stores that requires the services of half a dozen firetrucks and twice that many police cars. Just saying. ;)

Update!
News story on ksdk.com here....that still makes no sense. Smoke reported at all those stores...on the same street but not really close to each other? Fishy. Just saying.