Alarming Return

In anticipation of two weeks of paperwork to wade through, I decided to go into the office early on my return (a return that occurred a day late thanks to the cancellation of our flight from Boise to San Francisco). The office staff had graciously provided me with a set of keys to accomplish just such a task, in addition to the code to turn off the alarm. However, in the two weeks of holiday mode, my brain had conveniently forgotten the code. The four numbers that made up the code were still in the memory bank, but the correct order was not. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize this until I was brushing my teeth at seven in the morning. Having no office personnel’s number on hand, I thought I’d wing it, figuring that once I was in front of the keypad I’d let my fingers do the walking. Bad idea. My fingers failed me as much as my memory and I was left with a deafening siren engulfing my ears until I managed to power up the computer and look up someone’s phone number who gratefully provided the correct order of digits to silence the madness. Ironically, in the panic, the siren failed to summon any security service to check on the problem. Welcome home.