So, I’m lying in bed playing Solitaire ‘Til Dawn on the old laptop waiting for the Sandman to hit me on his nightly rounds (and, yes, I am referring to the Gaiman version here) when I hear a truck outside.

“Who the hell is moving in at this hour?” said I.

I looked out the window and saw a fire truck.

Oh boy, I thought, this is much more fun than cards. I grabbed my glasses and ran outside.

They had one truck at the entrance to the inverted T of our cul de sac, one to my right and two down to the left. It was to the left that all the fun was happening.

I saw our neighbor Brian standing outside with his two sons and ambled up. Turns out his neighbor’s smoke alarm was going off and the folks who lived on the far side kept coming over to Brian’s to see what he thought. He looked in their window and thought it looked “cloudy” so he promptly went home and got his boys out of bed and outside. As he was coming outside, the trucks arrived.

The firemen broke down the front door to get inside.

Turns out the alarm was going off for no good reason. And you know what the kicker is? The people who lived there were home. They’d slept right through their smoke alarm.

One night ours went off around 2AM and I nearly put a dent in the cathedral ceiling in our bedroom. I can’t imagine sleeping through this. And they have a dog. You think the dog would have been freaking out.

Oh well. That was fun.

And you know that everyone who lived here a year ago were likely freaking out given what happened last year across the street…