Fire Safety Week

Let's continue yesterday's accidental theme, shall we?

I wanted to get to work early this morning, since the CIA infosession is tonight and I'll have to leave work a little early to orchestrate the chaos. (Full update tomorrow!) This meant only one thing - letting the alarm clock win. It sounded, I woke, I stumbled. Of course, this getting up at alarm one is a little different than the routine I've enjoyed for the past several weeks. That routine has one of two outcomes. 1) Stave off the clock of ill repute just long enough to make sure Mama's Family is over at 7, and then get up and shower. 2) Fall asleep on the floor/couch/computer chair the night before, crawl to bed sometime during the night, make sure NOT to set my alarm in any way, and wake up in a frenzy.

1 is favored. 2 is feared. 3 is confusing.

By 3, I mean the subservient napper method. Like I said, I woke up early, and thus things did not seem as familiar as I would have liked. The chair in the middle of my path to the door - that remained a fixture (so did the arm of said chair into my knee. Ow.) But as I entered the hallway, something strange caught my half-opened eyes. The ceiling is glowing green.

Green glows are not uncommon at the Random of Run. If you were to walk into the darkened apartment after a long day, and not a light in the apartment on, you would experience an eerie illumination similar to the Mr.Burns-X-Files episode of the Simpsons. My computer alone has 17 different lights on it, few orange, most green. Spud's stereo, complete with the silly slot machine game that no one has ever figured out, let alone won, cycles thrugh glowing numbers throughout the day. There's the Playstation 2's two display colors of blue and green (since turning it off would negate the "Madden Channel" we grown accustomed to) But the hallway? That was a glow-free zone, friends.

Until now?

Someone has installed a new fire alarm.

Granted, there was a fire alarm in the hallway when we moved in, but it wasn't this space-age contraption. The old was manufactured circa 1937, and really served little purpose. Which made it completely acceptable when I knocked it down within our first month here. It was an accident, granted, but since Spud and I both have the awareness to identify fire, we felt no need to re-attach it to the ceiling. That was 15 months ago.

But now, someone has lost faith in our inferno identification skills. There a brand new 2004 production smoke detector in our hallway, and I have no idea how it got there. It's got a glowing green light (that clearly has thrown for enough of a loop to blog about) and in theory, a loud buzzer that will wake me up in the event something in the apartment is burning up. We didn't ask for it (unlike the ceiling in the bathroom, for which I have entered my weekly "Make sure this doesn't cave in on my showering head" request,) but it has shown up nonetheless. And that's the paradox of living at Fairfield Crossing.

"Ask and you shall not receive, but here's some stuff you didn't ask for instead. So we're square, right?"

Maybe tomorrow I'll ask them to fix the fridge, and instead they'll bake us muffins.