Well, it's been an eventful day. We went to my Mom's last night for corned beef, cabbage and hoppin' john. Was a delicious meal. The old lady decided to tie one on last night as my sister continuously and often, made my wife pomegranate/peach martinis. So, after about 5 or so...we finally decided to go home. As I was going to go back to work today, I was a little bitter about getting home after midnight for no reason at all except for the fact that my wife wanted to get her drink on at Mom's. No big deal...I've gone to work with less than 5 hours of sleep before, I could suck it up again last night.

She gets up in the middle of the night...I don't know if it's the Jimmy Legs, the booze or just the fact that she probably needs to be medicated to get a good nights' sleep, but she was up a few times with an upset stomach...go figure after drinking a distillery's worth of booze...but at 4am, she got up to go to the bathroom, laid back down and got back up again - does wonders for my sleep and Jan. 2nd disposition! This time, she says, "you need to get up, there is a fire in the house".

I smelled something that smelled like a chimney and a fire burning, but we hadn't burned a fire in the fireplace since New Year's Eve. Surely that wasn't it. Yet the kitchen was full of smoke. No stove on. What the hell is going on here? I thought at first maybe it was me, since my Mom smokes and I figured her black lung dust got on me and that was it. Nope. Not with a kitchen full of smoke. No smoke detectors working. Shoot! (only it was the 4-letter variety of that word).

So, we call 911 with the cell phone. Because we haven't signed up for local telephone because it would make more sense to just use the cell phones with free long distance, the 911 went to Charlotte. That is a problem because we are in South Carolina now. So, after some re-routings from the 911 services in Charlotte and Rock Hill, SC, we finally get Fort Mill..where we live. So they ask 20 questions, meanwhile, my house might be burning to the ground. Fortunately, there were no visible flames. Could this fire be in the wall? Oh my...what will happen.

Well, 10 minutes and 5 fire trucks later, the Men in Red are investigating. Surely they are going to find something bad - faulty wiring or whatnot, and I am going to go through the roof with the builder. Nope, two hours later, a quarter-size Duraflame ember was still stoking in the fireplace from two days ago! Because it didn't have enough heat to move smoke up the flue, it got into the vent system which in turn pumped it downstairs. How stupid I though. We just wasted all these men's valuable time and had 5 freakin' trucks waking up the neighbors.

Needless to say, I didn't go into work today. Just too exhausted...my wife's booze, the tossing and turning, the fire threat. Too much for me. I have 33 vacation days this year anyway, and I'm working from home today. Big deal.

The weird thing is that the fire alarm did not go off in the house. What if this was a real fire with real flames and real threat to kill us and our pets? Who is responsible? The builder is going to get an earful today for sure. The Fire Chief told us that the manufacturer of these alarms stinks. They have had several problems in the past 6 months in other neighborhoods. Cheapness pays, doesn't it? I imagine we will check everything before going back to bed from now on!

I guess the three morals to the story are: 1. Douse remaining logs in the fire; 2. Get one of the expensive fire alarms and install immediately; and 3. Get local telephone service for possible 911 calls!

Happy New Year to all, and I feel blessed that this wasn't a real emergency. Now let's concentrate on winning some money.

And oh yeah, Go Wake Forest in the Orange Bowl tonight (even though I am a Louisville native and fan), and most of all, Go Ohio State in the National Championship (after all, my wife - the OSU grad -  roots for my Tar Heels in basketball!)