I find this funny. No really, I do.
As you may recall, the house I live in (well, for another two weeks) burned badly two years ago. When repairs were done, everything had to be up to city code. My landlords (smart people that they are) really went all out and got heavy fire doors and a smoke/fire alarm system that would frustrate any pyromaniac or arsonist-in-the-making. The smoke/fire alarm system has two detectors in my apartment, one in the lower hall, one in the upper hall and two or three in the apartment above me. When one goes off, it's set to trigger the other ones so that if a fire would start in one apartment and that tenant wouldn't be home, the tenant in the other apartment would have ample time to get out before flames were lapping at their toes. Pretty nifty system.
Or so I thought. The things started going off at unpredictable intervals last night. It escalated throughout the day until the landlord came over and yanked a couple of wires temporarily. He's an electrician. He knows what he is doing. Or not. I came home from work around one in the morning and I could hear these mechanical bastards squealing out in the street! It's now almost three in the morning and every once in a while they pipe up again anywhere from five seconds to about a minute in duration. I'm quite sure there will be many a confused corpse in nearby cemeteries waking up if this continues. Surely this sound is at least 60 decibels beyond that of Paris Hilton getting booed off stage.
I am moving soon. In addition to working, I have at least 600 phone calls to make (not easy to do with banshee-like squealing in the background) and half as many appointments to keep within the next two weeks. There is packing to be done and cleaning to accomplished. A little rest is all I really want at this moment. Instead, I'll most likely be ordering a Miracle-Ear from some early morning infomercial.
No really, the timing is funny. The pain in my ears, not so much. Moral of the story: never believe a landlord with a beer in one hand who is yanking wires with the other telling you the problem is fixed.
8 comments:
I've said it before and I'll say it again - blogger comments SUCK!!
anyway.... ya know what I'd do?
find a cooler, buy some ice, dig out all my candles and flashlights and pull out a book or some magazines to keep me entertained
then I'd figure out a way to shut off the main power supply to the house
you can live without electricity - but you can't live without sleep!! hehehe
Hearing bells are we? It's particularly ironic that it's your smoke alarm, because they burned poor old Joan of Arc at the stake for that.
Well on the bright side the longest you'd have to put up with this is only 2 weeks. C'mon LW, you can do it!
;-)
Kitty - Yeah, Blogger comments have been a real pain lately no matter where I go. He finally he fixed it but I was close to going down and throwing the breaker! You can't live without sleep? That might explain why I've been so grumpy the past 20 years... =)
Kyknoord - I've had suspicions that I might be the reincarnation of JOA but I guess this settles it.
Beelze - I can see how landlords would find that an endearing quality. ;) I told everyone at work I didn't get my beauty sleep and apologized for being ugly.
Terri - If that went on for two weeks, I'd be moving into an asylum! Aah!!!!!
:-) This is a part of the don't-get-bored program landlords are performing on their tenants I've heard.. Let's blame it on the Bush admin or North Korea's nuclear war heads ;-)
But yet agn I say you gotta get that landlord to pay for his plot ;-)
Dr O2 - Lol, you are too funny; a don't-get-bored program! Well, I wasn't bored - I was busy searching for earplugs, cotton, pillows - anything to cover my ears with. I'm all for blaming things on Bush, so I'll go for that, too!
It is really "funny" when you can see the "funny" side to something, even though it actually is not bloody "funny" at all!!!! That would drive me totally insane! Great post!
That sucks. I had a similar experience just the other day but that's cuz I was cooking a steak and my little apt got smokey. At least mine shut up after a few squeals.
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