Paranoia, and random beeping sounds…

I haven’t been down in my basement for about a week and a half, given all the other commitments that we have had lately. My cousin came over tonight and we went down there and I notice that my barstools are slightly askew… one is midway across the room, the other is turned over in the corner. The one I usually sit on is still in place, but this spurs me to do an immediate assessment of all valuables in the basement. Was someone down here? My parents were the only ones aside from Matt and Sarah over, and they wouldn’t rearrange things like this! Aah!

Finding nothing out of place, I start trying to recall any way that the normal course of events could cause these stools to disapparate and appear in seemingly random locations in my basement. My cousin helps remind me that the one in the corner frequently breaks, and I do remember trying to press fit the legs back together to no avail the last time he was over. That one makes sense.

The one in the middle of the room I was having trouble with, until I remembered that he was leaning on something as we were throwing darts a few weeks back. He must’ve moved the stool there when I was letting the dog out or something. Whew. Crisis averted by the Power of Logical Thinking.

After slaying that demon, I am sitting on my couch blogging tonight when I hear a beep-beep echoing from somewhere. I do a quick assessment of the first floor smoke detectors, all of them have had their batteries removed (I need to get more!) The beeping continues. I check the smoke detector on the landing… no battery there either. I take a few minutes to do some audio triangulation (i.e. listening hard) to determine that the sound is coming from the basement. Oh crap, the only thing down there is carbon monoxide detectors!!

I hurry down there and hunker down in front of the monoxide detector and I hear a beep. CRAP! I start to do the freakout dance, and check the monoxide detector for what a short beep like that means. I unplug the thing (its a wall outlet jobbie) and try reading the back. Beep-beep! Wha! There’s no power to this thing! I wheel around, surprised, and survey the other outlets for monoxide detectors as the previous homeowners were a little paranoid about them.

Nothing. I start to head upstairs to wake up Tasha and then I see it. At the top of the wall that seperates the staircase from the basement, I see a cream colored smoke detector placed high up the beam, just above eye level. If you look past it too quickly, you miss it, but there it was. I open it up… a Duracell battery with an expiration date of March 2006.

I guess I need to learn to stop freaking out and buy more 9-Volt batteries.