Frozen Peas + Smoke Alarm

   In my third year at Swansea, I lived with 4 other girls in a house about a 10-minute walk from my university. It was a beautiful house, with a nice kitchen and a great backyard. Lovely as it was, the grill was a bit dodgy. Every time we closed the grill door, and left it for about 10 minutes or so, then opened it again, the smoke and heat from the grill would set off the smoke alarm. 

   It was a normal thing to walk into the kitchen when the alarm was off to find one of the girls standing on a chair in the middle of the room, with a bag of frozen peas [or burgers, whatever was at the top of the freezer] pressed up to the alarm. 

   The first time it happened to me, I was jumping around trying to figure out what to do. The second time it happened, I grabbed my bag of frozen peas and dragged the chair over to the alarm. Unfortunately I wasn't quite tall enough to reach the alarm. I had to tiptoe to get the peas to reach it, and I was praying I wouldn't fall flat on my face.

   One of the girls figured out, after a few of these incidents, that it was best to leave the grill door open. Duh. Took a PhD student to figure out that one.

p/s I do miss living there with those girls! It was such a blast.