Last Night was Pretty Miserable.

It started out well. I went to my future in-laws for dinner. They wanted to take me out for my birthday and had not gotten around it yet. EB's mom had gifts for me, which was very sweet. I got new workout clothes and water bottle, a shoulder bag, and best of all, a framed set of three of my engagement photos.
Dinner was great too. Casual and fun with good food. Of course, the weather was getting worse, so we called it a night and headed home, trying to beat the rain and thunderstorms, but still excited by the lightning.
At home, we found the power was out. It had been out earlier that day but had come on again before we left for dinner. We don't know how long it had been out this time. We lit candles, I tried to knit by booklight, and EB played games on his cell phone. In the end, we called it an early night, blew out the candles, and went to sleep, miserable with the humid heat and no air conditioning.
It was hard to sleep with all the emergency vehicles going all night. It seemed every half hour there was an accident or emergency somewhere. I kept waking up, wondering, "what now!?"
Hours later, about 3am, we were awakened by all the smoke detectors going off. We have one of them that says, "Fire Fire!" It was difficult to turn them off, especially in the dark, and the deafening noise and we ended up ripping two of them out. There's no apparent reason they went off. We probably woke all the neighbors, and scared them too since they were all going crazy, and for so long. They are battery powered so I don't know if it has anything to do with the power going out. The candles had been blown out hours before, and any lingering smoke would have triggered them much sooner. I checked them anyway but found no embers. We didn't smell any smoke either.
Back to bed we went. Again woken up by the last attached smoke alarm, but it's just the single obnoxious periodic beep that means, "please replace my battery."

At least the power's back on.