So, why is it that I sleep about 8 hours a night - about 1/3 of a day - and yet 90% of the time my smoke alarm battery dies it is while I am sleeping? These things never die during the daytime.

Anyways, about 4:00 am this morning I wake up hearing one of my smoke detectors beeping. No way I am going back to sleep with that beeping noise, so I get up to take care of it.

I go to the kitchen and listen for it. I hear it in the hallway near the guest bedroom. I go stand in the hallway and swear it is coming from the one there. I go get the ladder and replacement battery and climb up to replace it.

I remove the detector from it's base only to find that the battery can be replaced from the side (did not need to remove it from the base). I slide open the compartment when I hear the beep again. Not from THIS smoke detector. Ugh.

But I figured it was probably time to change this battery too, so I tried to remove the battery from it's compartment. No luck. No matter how I pulled and pried that thing was not coming out. Meanwhile the dying battery is chirping away nearby. So I give up and close the compartment and re-seat the smoke detector in it's base. Not-so-fast my friend! Re-seating this thing was just not happening. I got half it in, but could not get it to latch on properly. Meanwhile the beeping in the guest room seems to be getting louder.

So I leave the hallway one hanging and move the ladder into the guest bedroom. This one is set about 4 feet away from the one in the hallway. I climb up the ladder and wait to hear the beep. And wait. And wait...

Finally, a beep - this is the one! I do not remove it from it's base and instead find the compartment on the side. This model is different from the one in the hallway (compartment swings open instead of sliding) and I am able to get the old battery out and put the new one in.

I close the compartment and head down to the ladder and back into the kitchen to dispose of the old battery, when I hear - BEEP. Are you kidding me?! I go back into the bedroom and up the ladder to listen again (I did not want to use the test button in case it woke up my wife or son). So I wait. And I wait. And I wait... nothing but silence.

At this point I gotta get ready for work, so off I go. Seems like that last beep was a rogue one as the alarm hasn't made any noises since. I do need to re-seat the one in the hallway, but will probably replace that battery first - and do the rest in the house while I am at it. Fun job for tonight.

Hope everyone else's day has started better!