Fire!!!

I was in a dead sleep when I woke up to my fire alarm.  BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!  Aghhhhhh, it was so loud!!!

And I will probably not be able to convey to someone exactly how what happened next felt like, but I'll do my best.  Ok, so it's not the first time I've heard a fire alarm go off.  I've heard 'em go off numerous times over my lifetime.  Smoke from cooking inside.  In my last house, mine went off when I took a hot shower with the doors open.  And, of course, the infamous chirp with a low battery.

But here I was, in the middle of my sleep, between 1:00 and 2:00 A.M. when I hear the alarm go off.  But that's not all.  While that certainly woke me up, it's the next part that was terrifying.  I SMELLED SMOKE.

My house is on fire!!!  I literally jumped out of bed, my heart just a'pounding.  I prepped myself for jumping out my window to the ground two stories below.  But I saw no smoke.  So I began to search to see if I could figure out where it was coming from.  Nothing in my room.  So I checked the rest of upstairs, room by room.  Nothing.  The kitchen, perhaps?  An outlet?  I didn't know!  But the house smelled of something burning!!!  I then headed downstairs and checked.  Nothing!  But my house smelled of burning!!!  I grabbed my phone and started to dial 9-1-1.  But something just didn't seem right.

Where was this "smoke" coming from?!  I didn't see a haze in the house.  I found no smoke.  I found no fire.  But when I walked down the hallway downstairs, the smell seemed to strengthen.  So I finally traced it down to my furnace...or thought I did anyway.  I felt like the pungent, burning smell was stronger when I opened up the bathroom that houses the furnace.

But I wasn't 100% sure.  I debated back and forth about the fire department.  Back and forth.  But I really did think the smell was stronger in the furnace room.  Hmmm....

I opted not to call 9-1-1.  And I felt like my furnace was making a really odd noise, too.  Hmm.  What could it be?  All of this happened in less than 10 minutes...wake up, jump up, search the entire house, diagnose!

So I turned my furnace 100% off.  But now what?

I wasn't 100% sure it was the furnace!  But there was no smoke.  The smoke detector had gone off by now.  And every other room in the now seemed normal.  Hmm.

I did what any prudent man would do.  I grabbed the other smoke detector in my house and took it with me to my bedroom.  I then tried to sleep.  And I'm not going to lie, it was pretty difficult.  Because I wasn't 100% sure about the cause of the fire alarm going off, I wasn't comfortable sleeping in a house that had a burning smell to it.

But I had two fire alarms in my room now.  If the house was going to burn down, I was going to be awakened and jump out the window.

I slowly drifted off to sleep.  Would I wake up?