Too Many Mornings

- I drove through snow to get to work this morning.
- It's the last week of April.
- A cloud settled in on the school during first period, which meant the view out my windows was completely and totally white.
- It was kind of awesome.

- After some shopping and cabinet-rummaging, my backseat currently holds two rubber chickens, a 6' long piece of pipe insulation, batteries, a bejeweled plastic goblet, a sewing kit, and four pie tins.
- My second-to-last play of the year is Thursday and Friday this week.
- I am so very, very ready to be done with plays for the year.

- Today was Senior Ditch Day.
- I pointed out to the seniors in my Adv. Drama class last week that I would be a lot less ticked at them if they ditched for a day if they had their lines memorized.
- Especially since, you know, the play's in a week.
- The seniors were all missing today. So were half the sophomores.
- Grr.

- For Easter, Rachel, Ben, Brian, Jack, and I had a potluck dinner (Ham! Deviled Eggs! Various Side Dishes! Strawberries!) and watched the new Who.
- I like Who. A lot.
- I also like peanut butter M&M eggs.

- Remember that obtuse blog post from two weeks ago that I never explained?
- There system panel for all of the fire alarms in my building is located in a closet on my patio.
- Occasionally, it starts beeping one really loud beep every six seconds.
- It likes to start doing this sometime between 11:00 PM - 4:30 AM.
- My HOA won't give me a key to the closet because I'm not supposed to have access to the fire panel despite the fact that my water heater is located in the same closet.
- I've gotten really good at jimmying the door lock since I moved in.
- As far as I can tell, no one hears the beeping but me. The fire department certainly never respond to it and the HOA swears they can't fix it because it's never going off when they check it.
- I pointed out that's because they keep checking it during business hours and this fire panel is running on Tokyo time.
- ANYWAY, it went off again two weeks ago. Each night I broke in, hit the silence button, and called and called and called person after person to try to get someone to help me.
- Finally, I found someone at the HOA who seemed to care (I think the three messages I left on her voicemail in the middle of the night while standing in the closet itself so they could fully appreciate the loudness of the BEEEEE helped).
- She gave the fire company the approval to turn off the beeping.
- They came out during that obtuse blog entry.
- It hasn't beeped since then!
- Yay!

- Saturday morning I woke up at 4:30 when I heard a loud "BEEEE".
- I flounced out of bed (oh yes, I flounced) in a murderous-albeit-sleepy rage and went to the kitchen to get the trusty knife I use to jimmy the lock.
- Then I heard it again: BEEEE.
- But it sounded a little different. It was louder in the kitchen. That's not how that works.
- I waited clutching my knife, my cat-like muscles poised, for the next beep.

- Of course, when I say cat-like, I mean hypothetical cat-like since my resident cat's muscles were occupied with butting her head against my leg in an attempt to get scratc-

- BEEEE.

- Ah. It's my carbon monoxide detector.

- I took out the batteries and waited.
-
-
-
- Silence.
- I went back to sleep.

- There has not been any beeping since. Happily, I also have not died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

- Yay!

- P.S. Summer vacation starts one month from today. Not that I'm counting or anything.