Beeep beeep beeep beeep beeep

Yeah, I never did get around to taking any new snow photos this weekend. Here's one from a year or two ago, though.

Incidentally, I don't think it's possible to measure how staggeringly much easier it is to get me out of my apartment when it isn't minusgodawful outside. It's like putting on a different head or something.

Or at least a different attitude.

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I've figured out that if there is ever a fire in my apartment building I will, very probably, die.

And why's that, Dee?

Well, let's just say that when the fire alarm went off this morning it didn't even cause me to pause my recording of No Reservations from last night. And I wasn't entirely enraptured with the subject matter, either.

See, the thing is that I ignore our alarm far more often than I ever pay attention to it. I can be forgiven for today because I know that they're supposed to be doing some testing this week, but when you consider how easily I can ignore the alarm under almost any circumstances it's a little bit frightening.

It's the whole cry wolf scenario, you know. The alarm goes off way too often and way too easily. Some of it's the high percentage of college-aged first-time-away-from-home tenants, I suppose, but a lot of it is old building crankiness. For example? Well, if someone doesn't completely latch the back entrance any time the temperature's below about -20C, the fire alarm goes off. Seriously. Our alarm goes off when it's feeling chilly.

It's almost as bad as the fact that my apartment's hypersensitive smoke detector goes off if I happen to have anything more than a lukewarm shower. That's the beeping in the post title, by the way. I haven't heard it lately, but that's only because I've steeled myself to having very short, very unsatisfying, not warm enough showers whenever it's cold enough outside to prevent me from opening the window wide enough to help the completely inadequate bathroom fan disperse any steam before it makes it up to the bloody smoke detector.

And you wonder why I ignore alarms?

The sad thing about all of this is that I am very truly afraid of dying in a fire. I've always, for as long as I can remember, been phobic about being burned. Phobic to the point where it was hard for me to learn how to cook because I was scared to get too close to the stove (my mother, if you wondered, eventually gave up and made me take Home Economics in junior high. I suppose she figured that the teacher may as well deal with the problem. It wasn't exactly fun, but it did work so I'll give her credit for the thought). I've often joked that the one thing that could make me believe in reincarnation is my fear of burning. Who knows? Maybe I was a witch in another life...

Um, anyway. It just goes to show that too many false alarms can turn even a fire-phobic into a shrug-it-off.

I'm not sure that counts as a good thing.




But at least I haven't burned down yet.

That does count as a good thing.