Alarming news

This morning was the first in Lawrence that I haven’t set an alarm.

How fitting, then, that my smoke alarm, that industrial-strength banshee hanging from my ceiling, picked 10:00 a.m. sharp to open its mouth. As I and all the guys in my hall soon discovered, there’s no snooze button on this alarm, and no one had any idea how to shut it up. So after about ten minutes of being assaulted by the unrelenting shrill pitch, I pulled up a chair, lost five years of good hearing, and yanked the thing from its perch on the ceiling.

My ears will be ringing into next week.