getting started

So I decided to start a blog. I'm not exactly sure why...I think it's partly because my boyfriend's blog for Teach for America inspired me and partly because I figured this would be a good way to release my thoughts since I suck at writing in my journal. I have a monstrous headache at the moment, and am praying it's just a regular headache, rather than one brought on by invisible poisonous gases...Last night the carbon monoxide detector outside my room went off for the second time in the past 3 months...my roomates and I begrudgingly went outside on our deck at 5 am on a saturday morning to wait for the fire department to show up and de-contaminate our apartment. Luckily this time we knew the drill, so we got them to our door within 10 minutes of the thing going off.

The first time around we weren't as well educated. It was just Jamie and I living in the apartment at the time, and the alarm started going off at 3 am rather than 5...needless to say,  I was OUT and did not have any knowledge that anything was wrong. Once Jamie finally woke me up, we took the stupid thing off the wall, but neither of us knew what was going on with it (at this point we both just thought was a faulty smoke-detector). We noticed the beeping red light warning us to get to fresh air, cursed at it because there was clearly no smoke, unsuccessfully tried to disable it, hid it under the couch cushions to drown out the sound in case it started beeping again, and went back to bed. Five minutes later the obnoxious sound came on again, causing us to simultaneously storm out of our rooms with every intention of throwing the thing against the wall. Both of us felt a new-found sympathy  for Phoebe in that friends episode where they're up all night and she can't get her smoke detector to shut up. Upon our second attempt to rid the thing of its battery life-line, Jamie noticed some words in gray lettering that said carbon-monoxide detector, and we realized the danger we were actually in. We must have had some guardian angels looking out for us, because had we been successful in getting the batteries out the first time around, we would have probably died. The fire department came and found lethal levels of the toxic gas in our apartment, flushed all the air out of it, and told us to go back to bed and call back if it went off again. The questar-gas company came the next morning and fixed everything, or so we thought. I guess last night would suggest otherwise. My mom is insistent that we demand a new water heater, or move out. I guess I'll be calling the 24-maintenance manager today so we can sleep safely in our beds without the threat of a silent death hanging over each of our heads anymore. Here's a picture Jamie took on my cell phone of us waiting outside the first time around. hahaha.

If anyone doesn't have a carbon-monoxide detector in their house, get one! It might just save your life once or twice :)