2 a.m. and still working.
Preasure test of our optical pumping cell that is filled with helium, nitogen and some xenon and 1 g of fluid / vaporized rubidium.
6 bar of preasure.
A tube breakes.
The rubidium is spilled out of the cell by the 6 bar preasure.
Rubidium gets in contact with the air - and does what normal Rb is supposed to do in this situation (BURN).
Burning yields smoke development.
Smoke development is detected by the in-room smoke detector (yay, who thought that might happen).
Turning off the gas preasure takes some time, then calling the technical site support guys that they sould not react to the fire alarm.
Giving them the fire line number on the phone - and being told that this line is not connected to their central but directly to the fire fighters'.
And being told the alarm cannot be stopped anymore.
A few minutes later having about 3 or 4 fire brigedes and the police in front of our little facility.
Having 3 fire fighters in our little room asking if rubidium is dangerous (well, shouldn't THEY know this better?).
Not having slept that night.
Seeing all important people the next day (our workgroup leader, Company's Medical Officer, Safety Inspector, Radiation Safety Inspector, another Safety Inspector)
Getting home earlier due to lack of concentration and work (not having slept since 30 hours).
Deciding to drive to girlfriend.
Car battery was broken down.
Calling a few guys that could give my car a jump start (Thanks again to Mr. S.)
Recognizing that the on board electronics of my car had one of their bad 5 minutes and having disabled the servo steering (normal way to get around this: tread car like a computer - Have you tried switching it off and on again? ;) )
Not being able to do that due to still uncharged battery leads to a very power consuming unparking maneuver.
Arriving at girlfriend's place a few hours to late but being happy since then :) (not having slept for 36 hours).