Marco Polo with your Smoke Alarm

Someone needs to explain WHY smoke alarm detectors give off the low battery beep ONLY between the hours of 2:00 AM – 4:00 AM…..

Seriously – in my 40+ years of existence on this earth, the smoke alarm low battery indicators have never gone off at say, 1:00 in the afternoon….   A time during which you can replace all the batteries and if you need to, go out and buy more.

It’s always in the dead of night – waking you from a deep sleep, and necessary REM.

Just to make if MORE fun – that intermittent chirping is programmed at exactly 4 minute long intervals – so it’s only after you remove the batteries from the suspected alarm, and snuggle back into bed, that you hear that god forsaken “beep” indicating, yeah, you got the wrong one…

So you stand there in the middle of the night, listening for the “beep”, trying to find the guilty party, removing battery after battery.  After every battery has been removed from every smoke alarm in the house, you go back to bed only to hear “chirp”.

It’s like you died in your sleep and were transported to hell.

Once again, you get up and stumble around, possibly spilling a glass of water on something that now needs to be mopped up,  then you remember “oh, yeah” somewhere is the carbon monoxide indicator which somehow got moved.  So at 2:30 AM I am impatiently waiting for the next beep to indicate, like an evil game of Marco Polo, where the fuck the carbon monoxide alarm is hiding.

This is why (as I was reminded by Dr. Malibu) that you are supposed to replace your batteries at Day Light Savings.  Or today…  today might work too.

the game is tied up….

Dr. Malibu just asked me why he wasn’t mentioned for his efforts in trapping my upstairs neighbor.

I responded that if Dr. Malibu had actually caught something, there would have been a starring hero role.

Dr. Malibu then pointed out that they build statues of guys that only hit the ball 1/3 of the time.

Despite my almost fanatical obsession with sports I was completely unaware of this fact.

Unwilling to post any information that is absolutely not the near truth I asked him, “Who?”

Dr. Malibu then cited the following sources and asked me if he should keep going….

Willy Mays has a statue of him at AT&T park in San Fran he batted .302 lifetime
Albert Pujols has a statue of him and he batted a career .325 and still plays today in Anaheim
Stan The Man Musial batted a career .331 and he has many statues….

Let’s review the scores:

Rat 0
Dr. Malibu 0

But since he’s citing baseball statistics – and we all know – THERE’S NO TIME LIMIT IN BASEBALL – the game is still not over.  It’s tied up and we’re in extra innings.

There could be a statue in Dr. Malibu’s future….

Noisy Neighbors

You know what I hated most about living in my old apartment?  Having someone living right over me.  Never bothered me during the day, but at night, when I was trying to sleep, my old neighbor walked around like he had bricks tied to his feet.  I could hear every drawer open and every closet door close.  And some other details I could have lived without…. But he was a nice man who once gave me a Christmas tree and so I’m glad I never said a word.

Seven months into my move at the Bungalow I see I have a new neighbor.  I hear him at night, right above my bed.  He walks a lot lighter but I can still hear his little feet, and the scraping or chewing that is taking place.  (probably another detail I can live without knowing)  He’s not paying rent so he’s going to have to go.

The question is – how the hell is he getting in?  I’ve walked around the house several times, inspecting every tiny nook and cranny.  I crawled up on the roof to see where there’s a chink in the amour of my fortress.   It’s killing me that the rat is smarter than I am.  He obviously figured out a way to get in.  He’s also been smart enough to avoid the allure of peanut butter baited trap.

Lately – he’s been quiet.  Maybe he met his demise by a neighbors cat.  Or maybe a neighborhood owl.  I can only hope.