Where's The Fire?

by Adam Magnusson
26 April 2005

Well, as all my loyal readers know, I have housemates. Beyond that, we live in a place with a steeple ceiling in the common room of the house. It’s nice because it lets in a lot of light and it’s just a good looking room. Once we can dig up an 18 foot ladder, we have a coffee bag to tack up on the wall. We know where we can get some more as well, so it promises to be a room covered in burlap coffee bags and that, in our humble opinion, will make the room just quirky and fantastic. Besides, we are all coffee drinking folken, so that is a plus.

Where we live, though, is a complex. It’s not a condo or a house, per say, it is part of a complex and so we have property management. This is a plus, since all we need to do is not ruin the place and keep it clean and we are good to go when our lease is up. Another plus is it is rent controlled, in a fashion. If we keep the lease after ours is up, our rent won’t go up. This is a HUGE plus, especially in the land that is known as California and with the obscene rents here, that is a hell of a deal.

Since half the house is single and the other half of the house is sleeping in the same room (do the math, there’s 4 of us), I doubt that half of us will still be here when the lease is up, but I think as long as one of us is still on the lease our rent will stay the same.

The nice part is that my office is in the house. I get to go to work in my pj’s some days, if I like. I don’t do that over much, but I do it on occasion. The really nice part is the commute when I am in the office all day.

Just the other day, I had a full day in the office and I turned on some music, made myself a press of decaf,
Note: I say made a press. By this, I mean a French Press of coffee. For those of you out there who don’t know what a French press is, Google it and check it out. It really does make the best tasting coffee. Sure, it’s a pain in the ass getting your beans ground right and boiling H2O, but after a while, like all things, it becomes routine and isn’t all that strenuous. Back to the action…
So, press of coffee, music, computer on, needed applications open, and I am off. Working and working and working. Ahhh, the joys of life. Suddenly, I hear a sound. Are the roomies cooking, because I hear a “beep, beep, beep” sound. Is that the microwave? What the hell is that?

At this point, about 25 seconds, I am up and out of my chair and heading towards the office door and the common room and kitchen. What the hell is that sound and I need to work, damned it!

The smoke detector is going off. So, mystery solved, almost.

“What the hell are you two cooking?” This, to me, seems to be the intelligent question to ask the couple in the house. Both were home and both were having a morning together, so it only makes sense to assume they were cooking and some oil got spilled on a burner causing some smoke, or some eggs got over fried, or some such. The only problem with this logic is that I didn’t smell any food cooking.
“Nuthin’, it just went off!” This is Fly* saying this. He is also standing under the smoke detector with a burlap sack, the same one we hope to mount on the wall, fanning up at the smoke detector. Siren*, Fly’s girlfriend and another housemate, is standing at the front door, waving it back and forth, trying to clear the air.

“Well, if you all aren’t cookin’ anything, it’s probably the battery. Let me dig up property management’s number and I’ll get this taken care of.” OK, so, as I see it at this point, I make a phone call, suffer through 15 some odd minutes of beeping annoyance and then get back on with my day. So, I locate the number, dial, and start talking.

“Hi, this is Adam in unit # 1234* over on Common St.* The smoke detector in our common room is going off. We have a steeple ceiling and no way to reach it since it is 20 feet up.”
“Is there a fire sir?” Oh goody. I flash back to my days of hat purchasing and all the helpful questions I was asked therein. Another logical and intelligent human being asking obvious questions and here I was thinking that the day couldn’t get any better.
“No, it just went off; I think that it needs a new battery. Can you send maintenance right away to get this fixed?”
“Have you checked the battery sir?” Did I not start the conversation by informing you that I have high ceilings? Do you NOT know the units and recognize the number? Smoke detector—beeping-- no fire-- just fix it you rube.
“Well, seeing as the smoke detector is 20 feet up, no I haven’t.”
“Sir, you said it was the battery. If you haven’t checked it, how do you know?” Yes, that was actually said to me. You know what, be helpful and fix it, don’t sit there, you knob!
“Well, as it is beeping without smoke or cause, one can only guess and logic tells us…?”
“What are you implying sir?” OK, retarded squirrels are officially running the place that I live.
“Never mind! Can you please just send maintenance?”
“It may take a few hours, sir, they are back logged today.”
Well, great. So, I get to sit around and listen to this annoying beeping for the next three or so hours. Great. Loving it! Can you maybe come over and hit me with a brick while you’re at it? Oh, and did I mention that I work from home and that if I can’t work, it costs me money and without money I can’t pay you freakin’ people.

So, that was that. Good fun and about three and a half hours of, “Beep, beep, beep! Pause… “Beep, beep, beep!” Jebus kill me! Finally, maintenance showed up and, wouldn’t you know, they had the wrong ladder. Who knew! Finally, FINALLY they get the damnedable thing fixed. What was wrong with it, you wonder. The damned battery needed to be changed. I guess you need some sort of advanced degree to know that a battery in an appliance is dead.

That’s only half of it though. I was out that night and I called the roomies to see what was up for the night and weekend. What do I hear in the background? “Beep, beep, beep!” I thought that blood would be shed. I was about ready to kill. So, I call emergency maintenance and communicate with Fly* to get this whole thing worked out. I get home a short while later and the freaking thing is finally fixed.

What did they do, that is my question. The answer was simply. The night maintenance simply swapped the thing out. They also set it lower down. Not low enough that we can fix it, (wouldn’t that make sense) but low enough to fix no matter what ladder is brought. At least someone was thinking, sort of. Took long enough. At least it’s fixed and we have had no troubles since, but my bedroom has a ceiling like the one in the common room. Lord knowing me and my luck I’ll be woken one night soon at about 4:30 to the lovely music of, “Beep, beep, beep!” God, I look forward to that.

* Once again, names and addresses have been changed to protect the innocent.

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