the gods are not smiling

I forgot to check my mailbox when I got in last night.

It's not great sleeping weather. My fan helps, but sleeping with it on has its own problems. I got to bed sometime after midnight and lay sprawled and sweaty until I somehow drifted off to sleep a while after that. I slept fitfully and woke up once or twice in the night. My alarm went off at 8. And again at 8:09. Then I turned it off and turned the radio on, laying half-asleep listening to people talking about whether there's too much coverage of the September 11th anniversary in the media. I turned the radio off and sort of fell asleep again.

This horrible whining noise started. I thought maybe my fan had gone wonky, but it wasn't coming from the fan. It was coming from the fire alarm thingy. It didn't really sound like a fire alarm, though. After I'd stood around for a while debating whether I should evacuate or just have a shower, the alarm started making more alarm-like noises. I made up my mind and lazily pulled on some clothes and sat around the back porch.

It turns out it was just a test--something hinted at by the fact that my landlord's truck and some alarm service van were parked outside the building. Nobody else was out there and it took a few minutes before somebody inside noticed me wandering around outside looking forlorn and flagged me in. I told him what apartment I lived in and he said they'd already been through there, testing the smoke detectors. They'd locked me out, so I had to get the landlord to let me in again. It was a little mortifying. If I'd known, I'd have cleaned up the kitchen a bit.

On my way out to the car, I noticed there were some things in my mailbox: some unimportant-looking government thing and a slip of yellow paper telling me they'd be testing the fire alarm at 9 am today.

I was only a little late for work.

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