21

No two days are the same, and today is one I'll certainly remember.

First off, at Little Red today, the kids each got two votes. The movie with the highest number of votes was "Hercules" - the kids enjoyed it, but I would have definitely picked "Mulan" or "Toy Story".

On the way back, I saw the sign for the Good Neighbor Festival. Heidi says the theme this year is pirate. That will be fun.

At work today, I met my friend from DNR (Paul). He is retiring and had to meet with Employee Trust Funds today. Employee Trust Funds is in our office - they handle the state pension and retirement plans. Paul has been in a motorized wheelchair for as long as I have known him. He cannot move his legs. Myself and a few other guys spent a few hours through the years helping to transfer him between wheelchairs whenever one broke down. He is 70 now and has worked for the state for around 45 years or so. He really liked his job, but he can't work forever. He is an institution, but I'm happy to be able to chat with him as he is in our fantasy football league.

While moving about the ground floor today, I realized it was a cultural appeciation day - not sure if they call it Diversity Day anymore. Regardless, I got a few pictures of a dugout wood canoe. Kai would be proud of me.

At Little Red, in addition to the movie, here is Kai's paintings.

This is Abu, Kai's stuffy.

And then the part that will make today a little memorable (all is good, so no worries). 

I think I was 2 or 3 years old when the firefighters came to put out a chimney fire at our house when growing up - I remember that night. Tonight with the humidity and what not all, I could not get the smoke detectors to stop their blaring around 8:30 PM. It is super annoying because you can't live in a house like this...then this happened.

The smoke alarms chirp based on what they are detecting. Four beeps is bad, that's carbon monoxide. I am not sure why this one was doing four beeps.

I called police non-emergency at 8:59PM. I requested no sirens. Heidi and Kai went to the car to park in front of the house to stay in the nice air conditioning. The tactical unit came got to our place around 9:13PM. It took them a little longer since they were on the other side of town.

Here is what our situation looked like on the PulsePoint app.

Here is the tactical vehicle.

There were four men who came out. They went into the house while I stayed outside. They checked all the rooms twice, and there was no carbon monoxide. That's great news. When they went to reset the smoke alarms, they isolated the issue to two alarms upstairs. He said that the alarms are relatively new (from 2008), but sometimes you can get a bad batch that are extra sensitive. I think that is the case. While they were giving me the recap of the events, the smoke alarms went off again. This time I was in the house when they reset them. I asked them if there was a way to not have the issue happen again. He said I could disconnect the two bad ones upstairs, leaving two good ones yet. While it is hot and humid yet, and while I'm waiting to order two new ones, this is probably what we'll go with. Two smoke detectors upstairs should be fine for the short term.

They left around 9:30.