firetruck!

I was home fairly early today and sitting in my room, expecting a peaceful evening of blog reading and knitting, when one of my housemates started yelling to get out of the house. I'd heard some rumbly noises, but assumed they were coming from outside and ignored them. Luckily, my housemate was less oblivious and actually went to investigate. He discovered a bad smell emanating from the basement and the CO alarm going off and called 911. Two firetrucks arrived pretty quickly, driving the wrong way up our one way street, and a third stopped at the end to block traffic. A separate ambulance also arrived to give the housemate who discovered the smell oxygen and we all got our pulsox measured. It was very exciting. The neighbours were all pretty interested, especially the old people whose sole hobby seems to be sitting on the porch observing the neighbourhood, who came over to chat with the firefighters. The kids across the street were as thrilled as this kid and stayed glued to their front window after they were forced inside by their parents. Now all the excitement is over and we're left with no heat. Lucky it's unseasonably warm today.

Bonus! Some inspector just came by to check that it was really okay or something, but he also noticed that there's some illegal piece of piping on our apartment's hot water heater so he's sending someone out to shut it off. No heat or hot water - woo!

Update: The oil guy is here fixing the furnace so we may have heat back soon. We're hoping the water heater guy won't want to come out on a Friday night to cut us off, too.