I'm not feeling all that great. I currently have whatever lab plague is going around. I'm have a bit of trouble concentrating. Some people would suggest that I go home and get some rest, but a) I don't want to waste PTO on being sick, and b) I'm not sick enough that I'm just going to go to sleep, which means I would go home and still try to do things, which is my style.

It's been unreasonably cold in my neck of the woods for some time. I'm pretty sure that's probably the case for most of the readers here. So I'm going to do a short PSA. Buy a carbon monoxide alarm. Use it. If you have one, make sure the batteries are fresh. Most of all, make sure the thing makes a god-awful noise that will wake you up and/or be annoying enough that your neighbors can also hear.

When I was 5, my mom and I almost died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Basically what happens, is that the heme group that holds oxygen in your blood has a greater affinity for carbon monoxide, so you essentially suffocate. It was unseasonably cold the year I was 5, we were living in a small apartment, and my mom was doing some weatherproofing. She plastic sheeted all of the windows, made draft snakes for the doors, essentially she tried to make sure that the heat wasn't escaping the apartment. What she didn't do, was make sure that a pigeon didn't die and clog up the flue, essentially pumping carbon monoxide through the heating system.

Over a week or so, she and I had some headaches that went away when we both went to school. Gradually, all of the fish in my aquarium died (I really, really was hit by the death of my frog Kermit). Our usual routine was that my mom would get up at 5:30AM, get ready for work, get me ready for school (I was in afternoon kindergarten), and drop me off at the sitters. The night before, I was alternately watching the Muppet show and looking out the window, so when we went to sleep, the curtain was slightly open. 6AM came and went, and finally, after the babysitter couldn't contact us by phone, she came to the apartment, looked in the window, and still couldn't wake us up by screaming our names and pounding on the glass. She called the ambulance, and quite a few hours, my mom and I came to at the hospital.

I have 2 CO detectors in my house, one in the basement, one on the main floor. I have a fire alarm on every floor. I suggest you do the same.