Beep. Beep. Beep.

One of the upstairs neighbors set off the smoke alarms about a week ago. We're not sure exactly what happened, but in the past former residents did things like leave something in their toaster oven too long, causing it to go off.

This only merits mentioning because the detectors are hard-wired, so if one goes off, they all go off, including the ones in our apartment, and they are painfully loud. When it goes off, we literally have to cover our ears until it stops. The dog isn't too thrilled, either.

And then, as a bonus, there is one detector on the wall at the very top of the stairs going up to the second floor that has been beeping once every 30 seconds or so for the past week. You can hear it anywhere in the house, even in the basement, even from outside. It's not loud enough or frequent enough to keep us from sleeping or anything like that, but in the lack of other sound (from the TV, for example) it is fairly noticeable, and after a while it's kind of maddening.

I emailed one of the folks upstairs, and she said she doesn't know why it's continued to beep all this time. She's asked the landlord to come around and deal with it, but who knows when that will happen?