Random Acts of Honking...

What a night... At approximately 3:55am, Jim and I both woke up and said to each other "What's that noise?" It sounded like some type of alarm or siren. Something was not right. I was concerned because we had just installed a new programmable thermostat last night (yay us!) and for some reason I had visions that we had messed it up and our furnace was about to burst into flames and this was our warning... It wasn't the furnace.

We went in the office where the sound seemed to grow louder and Jim said "It's the computer- turn it off." I promptly shut down the computer, afraid that it too, might burst into flames. No luck- the sound kept wailing on.

It seemed like maybe it was coming from outside, so I asked Jim to go see if he could figure it out. The sound continued for several more minutes. I'm sure everyone in the neighborhood was awake by this point- I saw lights flicking on. Finally, the sound broke into a few short bursts and then silenced.

From the office, I could see Jim down by his car with the hood open. I was confused, because his car does not have an alarm. After several more minutes, he came inside for tools. I inquired about the situation.... It was his car horn. It somehow spontaneously started honking and then got stuck that way. So it was as though someone was sitting in the car, laying on the horn at 4am. Nice.

A cop came by and asked Jim what was going on. He suggested that Jim unhook the battery (hence the tools). I guess he figured out how to do that because I heard him come up the stairs a while later and the rest of the night passed without incident. I'm sure the neighbors were thrilled. Hopefully, no one realized we were the culprits! Between that and the McCain sign in our yard, we're bound to get kicked out of the neighborhood :)