As if the ticking-bomb glass breakage sensor wasn’t enough, in mid-afternoon the smoke alarm outside my office began shrieking. We ran around sniffing the air, opening doors, checking the furnace and water heater and the clothes dryer. No smoke, no fumes. Not again! We called the alarm monitoring company and luckily we got Larry again. My first words were, “Don’t send a fire truck.” He chuckled (somewhat paternally, I thought) and said no, because of the previous malfunction, they’d take our word for it that we weren’t crazed arsonists with the homeowners secret user name and passwords. Unfortunately, Larry couldn’t see an alert for the smoke alarm but he could see location #5 which was the device I’d deactivated earlier. Curiouser and curiouser. From…

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