How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

Last night, I ran to the store to get some things for dinner. As I came back down the driveway, there was pirateguillermo talking to one of the neighbors. We exchanged pleasantries and then I headed into the house to make dinner.

pirateguillermo and I were going great guns on the dishes when Peaches came out of the shower. And the fire alarm went off.

This is not the little high-pitched beeper wherein you can simply remove the battery and shut the stupid thing up. No, this is one of those multi-purpose, hardwired into the house, alerts the cops, the fire deparment and your mother every time the cat moves sorts of things. We never wanted an alarm system, and in fact pirateguillermo knocked out the phone when he tried unplugging it. He finally figured out how to unplug it so that it stops trying to contact the mother ship and freaking out when it fails. But in doing so, it "forgot" its code. So, even though we had the alarm code, it kept telling us that the code we were using was invalid. pirateguillermo called 911 to tell the operator that it was a false alarm, but they hadn't been contacted by anyone, so the fire dept. wouldn't come and charge us a $50 idiot fee. Nope, it was just us and our screaming house.

Then our neighbor came down the hill in the pitch black to make sure we were okay. When we explained to him what had happened, his mouth said "I'm glad to hear you're okay," but his face said "Shut that fucking thing UP!" He and pirateguillermo went down into the basement to break into the locked box that houses the controls when the thing went quiet. Mind you, it's still flashing "FIRE ALARM!" but at least it's not broadcasting to the world that we're idiots. pirateguillermo and I were afraid to touch any buttons on the thing to make the "fire alarm" go away because we didn't want to start it off again.

And after all this, I vaguely recall the real estate agent saying something about a problem with the second bathroom's shower setting off the fire alarm. At the time, it seemed so trivial....
Just before this, I had been trying to convince the neighbors that we should get together for a barbecue. I think THAT'S out the window!