Sunday, October 12, 2008

Get your ass out of bed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had an interesting morning.

About 5:00 this lovely morning I awoke to every smoke alarm in the house going off. It was LOUD.

I ran around looking/sniffing for smoke and noticed nothing. I went up stairs to check with the roommates/make them fix it because they can actually reach the alarms if they stand on a ladder but neither one was home. Crap. I went outside and called the roomie that owns the house and got his voicemail. No answer. I called my mom in Maryland because I thought she might be up and got no answer again. I felt weird about calling 911 because I didn't actually think there was an emergency but I definitely would not be going to sleep any time soon and I wasn't sure how to fix it. I went back in the house and poked at the alarm in my room with a broomstick to see if it would stop. It didn't. Shit.

Outside again, I called 411 for the number to the fire department (the non-emergency one). Got connected to some City of Morgan Hill voice recording that was no help. Sucked it up and called 911 (I have a serious aversion to calling 911...I never feel like it's a big enough deal to call...even when I was younger and two guys were kind of trying to break into my house and I was home alone, I didn't call). I was told an engine would be sent out, and called my dad while I waited outside. It was a chilly morning and I was in a robe. Totally killed my warm-in-flannel-sheets vibe I had going.

I kept expecting a neighbor or two to come out and investigate but no one ever did. I live in a duplex. I can hear when they shut their bathroom door. No way they didn't hear anything. Nice to know they care if my house burns down.

After a few minutes an engine pulls up (lights going, no siren...it would have been a little satisfying to wake all the neighbors up) and three guys get off. As we are walking to the house my roommates dog who I assumed to be out with the missing roommate decided to start barking and sound all vicious so I have to convince the guys that the dog is chicken shit and won't actually eat them.

After walking around and determining that indeed ALL of the alarms in the house were going off, I was informed that my (loud) roommate's door was locked and they needed to get in there. My morbid mind went right to thinking he was dead inside. Nice. Having no other way to get in, we picked the lock with a coat hanger. Happily, no dead bodies were inside.

Once the lack of smoke/carbon monoxide was established I was told one of the alarms was probably low on batteries and connected to the others which set them all off. One of the firemen (the cute one...yay!) goes out the truck and comes back with a huge bag of batteries. He grabbed a ladder from my garage and pretended it was a surf board while he climbed the stairs. Obviously a morning person. They change the batteries in a couple alarms and they all keep going off. Eventually it is decided that two of the alarms upstairs are faulty, and they offer to come back and install new ones if we need them too.

While they were working I noticed the last name on one of their jackets and find out that he is the father of a girl I have known since junior high. I have totally been to his house. We talk about what she is doing (school, boyfriend, blah, blah, blah) and what I'm doing (no more school, bike shop). I mention that I race bikes, explaining all the bikes in my room. Apparently they didn't notice the bikes in my room so they all run in there to check them out. Three firefighters in uniform in my bedroom...

cue porno music.




Not really. They left, I went back to bed, then to work.


Good times.

1 comment:

Denise said...

The exact same thing happened to me, yesterday. All of the alarms were blaring at once and I thought I was going to go mad.

We have 15' ceilings (Jimmy is out of town, of course) and I had to drag the extension ladder into the house, just so I could yank that last alarm from the ceiling.