So lets take a trip back, a trip back to mid October. It's Texas so it's dry as all Hell and oddly warm. Work is going well even though I'm in crunch, things are still good. I was still in the honeymoon period with the new wife (even though we still have not gone on a honeymoon) and life was just good.
Until the morning of October 18th.
I wake up at about 4AM and I hear ringing. I think I'm going crazy and lay there for a few minutes and listen to the horrible ringing sound and think holy crap, am I going deaf? A few minutes later I notice a hint of red outside and look out the window and see a firetruck pull up.
On hand, I was relieved that I wasn't going deaf, on the other hand I'm not petrified my only year old condo is on fire. I wake the wife up and then do a quick run through of my condo as I make my way to the front door (3 stories, so a few places to look) until I finally loop through my garage and go into my office out my back door where I see the fire department.
Long story short (mainly because much of it is a blur)-- the sprinkler room, which is attached to my unit, had malfunctioned so the bell went off and it jettisoned all of its water. A few hours later, all if fine.
Except for a loud noise of some sort of engine constantly idling. Just standing outside it wasn't so bad and you could barely hear it unless you were pressed against the door of the sprinkler room but since I share a wall and ceiling/floor with the sprinkler room, I could hear it plain as day everywhere in my condo and it would even shake my living floor.
I complained about this many times but they either didn't believe me or miraculously showed up when the engine decided to stop for an hour or so. This went on for about 3 weeks until it finally just stopped.
Hooray! Sweet glorious sleep! No more noise and all is well.
But that is all in the past, lets now fast forward to last Thursday (02/12/09). Again, all is well in life. I'm in crunch again, but it's going well. The weather is odd but still pleasant. Things with the wife are still going well even though we still have not taken our honeymoon.
So that Thursday morning I get a call from whatever company handles that sprinkler room informing me that the sprinkler room is on my circuit breaker (so apparently I've been paying the electricity for my whole building for that) and it needed maintenance the following Monday. Fine, whatever, I only work a few minutes away so we set up a time that I can be there so they can have access to the circuit breaker.
All is well, or so I think.
At about 4AM this morning the wife wakes me up telling me she hears the sprinkler room bells. I don't get in uber panic mode like last time but I still give the home a once over and look around outside. I assumed this room is automatic and when the alarm is tripped the fire department is automatically called so I give it a few minutes.
A few minutes later nobody has shown up so I call 911 and let them know but they've already apparently had a few calls so I go back to my living room and turn on the Wii and start playing some VC since the wife has manned the laptop at this point.
We wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. Finally about 25 minutes later (!) I hear some voice and two cops have shown up and are walking around outside. They check around, finally knock on my door and inform me what is going on, I tell them this has happened before and gave them the number of the people that called me on Thursday. All is well. About 10 minutes later the fire department finally shows up (!!) and the finally turn the sprinkler alarm bell off.
At this point the cop knocks on my door again and informs me I have no fire protection until Monday when they can get a hold of the people that handle the sprinkler alarm. Whoopee!
So yeah, now it's about 5:30AM and I'm wide awake and now paranoid that I have no fire sprinklers in my home. Sure, I have smoke detectors but those only do well when I'm home to hear them. It doesn't help ease my fire fears that a coworker recently had his house burn down. -_-
