It's another rainy, cloudy, "stay-inside-with-a-big-book" kind of day, just like yesterday. I re-read the Empire series this past week, and it always impresses me how well-written and planned the plots are. It's probably my second favourite series after Light & Shadows.

Last night while keeping up with my Tech brethren online, a low beeping invaded the back of my mind. It was one of those repetitive but persistent sounds that you don't notice for a long time, but one that you can't stop hearing afterwards. After turning off everything loud in my apartment (a fan and a Henry Mancini album), I realized the sound was coming from somewhere in the walls. A little more searching got me closer, when suddenly, it stopped. I couldn't tell if I'd imagined the whole thing or not.

Of course, the sound restarted as soon as I got back to work. I wandered outside to find that the sound was echoing up and down the walkways of the apartment complex. However, the farther from my door I walked in either direction, the softer the sound became, until I could no longer hear it. Around this point, I really got the feeling that I was just imagining everything, so I walked around the whole building to be certain. There's a dream-like, almost hypnotic quality associated with this, wandering around a darkened building after a rainstorm in search of a mysterious noise.

The culprit, when discovered, turned out to be some sort of alarm in an apartment almost directly below mine. Outside the front door, the piercing beeps saturated my brain, and I couldn't see how the occupants on either side were even surviving so close to ground zero. So being the dutiful neighbour, I reported it to the property manager who said he'd walk by later to check it out.

It's much easier to ignore something like that when you know it has a tangible source (and also when your music is turned up higher). The beeping didn't stop until ten o' clock this morning. At least I didn't die in my sleep in a blazing inferno...