untalented cook?

At 10:05 this morning, I was in the middle of a shower when the fire alarm in my new apartment building started shrieking. My brain, caught completely by surprise, began shrieking along with it. I leaped blubberously out of the shower and tromped out of the bathroom in search of the alarm, tracking water onto the tile and carpet.

Luckily, I didn't have to go far: the alarm was on the ceiling about two steps away from the bathroom door. I reached up to see whether I could turn the alarm off, and... nothing. I concluded that it wasn't my alarm that had initiated this, and that I had little choice but to ride this out. A peek out the window showed no one else leaving the building, reinforcing the impression that this was either a false alarm or something very small-scale, like a minor kitchen emergency.

At a guess, I'd say that all the alarms in the apartment are connected, and that a tenant has little choice but to endure such alarms when they occur. I've been told that I live in a building with a bunch of older folks (I've seen some younger folks, but it's mostly been the 60-and-over crowd), so it's possible that someone lost track of some frying eggs or carelessly smoked while sitting too close to their own apartment's alarm.

There have been no fire trucks since the alarm went silent, so I'm not too worried. I had, however, forgotten what it was like to have to deal with fire alarms in apartment buildings. We had several false alarms back when I lived in an apartment on Route 1 in Alexandria from 1998 to 2002. Today was a reminder of the down-side of communal living.


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