cuchillo

I went to bed late last night. I was up doing Russian homework. However, I was awakened around 2:00 AM. You know what is really annoying? False fire alarms. So freaking annoying! I woke up just annoyed, but Shannon woke up a bit panicked, "wha-what's going on!?" So I had to get up and take a look at them all. I pulled the batteries out of each of them, and licked them to make sure they were good. Nine-volt Zap! Yep, all good. The whole time, the fire alarms would sound for a minute and then be silent for a minute, on and off. Then they just quit after about fifteen minutes.

I went back to bed, but about twenty minutes later... Ahhh!!! What is going on! Are there evil mischievous spirits just messing with my patience? Maybe it's radon or something, I don't know. So I checked the crawlspace or oubliette as my brother likes to call it. It looked fine. The furnace wasn’t reporting any trouble codes. The fire alarms were still going on and off. Oh, and they are all interconnected, so if one goes off they all do. Shannon was about to smash them all with a hammer so she could get some sleep, but I managed to talk her out of it. So after some opening and closing of the alarms, and other seemingly pointless things, they finally stopped. Of course at this point it was a little bit difficult to fall back asleep. We were both wired from the alarms going off, and we nervously waited for them to start doing it again.

Luckily, they didn't, but I was a bit later getting to work than I wanted to be. I talked with Sharon at my office this morning, and she said that sometimes little insects get into the sensors and set them off. I also read about that here. I bet that was the problem. It is the season when insects start to come out of hibernation, suspended animation, or whatever they do during the winter. I think I'll take a can of air to them tonight. On a lighter note, spring is in the air. The crocuses are beginning to bloom around town.

Slightly related: You know what the word for crocus is in Russian? Шафран (shafran). That is interesting because the spice saffron comes from crocus flowers.