A Place to Hide

To say that the day was rather chaotic would an understatement.

The instruction manual for our new gas fireplace says it needs to be run at maximum output for 4 hours, and after it cools down the glass door should be removed and cleaned on the inside. Then it's supposed to run another 10 hours, again at full power, to "cure". The manual warned that the smoke alarm might be triggered by fumes during this process, so I wanted to have all the doors and windows open while it was going on.

Since it wasn't windy or raining today, I decided to do the first phase. Sure enough, the fireplace emitted foul smells and triggered the smoke detector -- several times. The building codes here are very strict about the number and location of smoke detectors, and requires that they are interconnected, so that when one of them is triggered, they all sound. We have seven of them, and they're very loud (85 db). When they all go off it's enough to wake the dead. Miss Annie was very agitated by it all, and it didn't help that we were moving furniture around all afternoon in our office consolidation upstairs.

After things settled down Annie was looking for a quiet den to hide in. The best place she could find was under C's desk.