Alrighty. Lots of things to recap. I'll go day by day and hopefully will tell all in a coherent manner.
Tuesday:
The rest of the day was lovely. We were not able to see Avatar unfortunately, because the theater was sold out. Not cool of them, although Matt was determined to see SOMETHING, so we saw Did You Hear About the Morgans? which was a very sweet, funny, wholesome movie. I greatly enjoyed it and I think Matt did too. Then Matt got us lost in Lowell and I saved us because I knew where we were (much to my delight) and he did not. It was freezing. It was 8 degrees. Horrid.
Wednesday:
The only hugely notable thing that happened today is our smoke alarm fiasco. It was evening, Mum was at karate, Dad made a fire (in the fireplace, although I hope no one really needs that clarification) and all was well and quiet. I was sitting at the counter and he was sitting at the kitchen table when I noticed that the living room and kitchen were filling with smoke. Smoke that was visible and smellable. I mentioned it to my dad who explained there had been a backdraft and the smoke would dissipate in a matter of minutes. He opened a window and went back to his dinner and newspaper. The cold winter air began to creep into the living room and kitchen and as far as I could see, the amount of smoke hadn't minimized in any way. I asked him if he had opened the flue. I asked this timidly because in the past, I have been the only one to ever forget to open the flue. He said yes and I decided to vacate the kitchen for warmer areas. I went downstairs once more and noticed the smoke had spread to the other end of the house, to the school room where Sophie and Meghan were on the computer. I went back upstairs. I was sitting on my bed reading when the first smoke alarm went off. I looked up, saw that my room, with the bedroom door closed, was now filled with smoke and at the same moment, every other smoke alarm in the house began to loudly go off. A very shrill high-pitched beeping. Awful. All seventeen or so smoke alarms, that are apparently programed or wired to all go off, when one of them does. In the 3 seconds where the first alarm went off, I looked up and registered my smoke filled room, and the other alarms started to peal, including the one in my room, I clapped my hands over my ears, and skidded out of my room to go find out what was going on. Sophie was going around waving at smoke detectors, hoping futilely to make them stop, and my dad was striding around the house opening windows, going to the basement, climbing the ladder to the attic, trying to figure out the smoke problem. Sophie opened both of her bedroom windows, something I refused to do in my room. One, my windows had been closed and firmly locked since October, and two, if I opened them, my room wouldn't be warm again until June. My room is impossible to heat, smoke or not, my windows were not opening. The house was full of smoke. We could see it, smell it, and it was making my throat very dry. My dad goes back downstairs and as I stand at the top of the stairs, unsure of what to do, the smoke alarms stop. They had been beeping for about 6 minutes, with a brief 10 second cease-fire after 3 minutes, during which all Sophie and I had time for was a sigh of relief which quickly turned into groans. Sophie cannon-balled onto her bed and stayed there with her hands over her ears. The smoke alarms stopped again and my dad walked through the house closing windows and in passing told me that I had been right, he had forgotten to open the flue. He had solved the backdraft problem, but then he either forgot to reopen the flue, or he opened it, but it slide back to the closed position without his notice. This was a very long trying ordeal. The house cleared of smoke (eventually) and I had a good story waiting for Mum when she got home.