So here's something interesting that happened. The other day, I left my space heater on at work when I left for the day. The building is just too cold during the day with the air conditioner cranked all the way to subzero temps, and I often have to keep my space heater on to avoid catching pneumonia. I leave my space heater on all the time but, I'll admit, have often pondered over the irony of a three-time winner of the annual fire safety poster contest in grade school (okay, I never WON, but I placed, which is close enough) breaking the number two rule after "No smoking in bed." You never leave a space heater on high while unattended. Never. But, still, I do it almost every day.

Around ten o'clock at night, the alarms all went off in the building, and the manager who lives closest was called to investigate. She got there at the same time as the police, who went into the building only to find that my space heater had set a small, smoldering fire in my plastic garbage can. The way it was described to me was that, while there were no shooting flames per se, there was smoke and embers. They unplugged my heater, did whatever they needed to do to take care of the smoky situation in my plastic garbage can, and then the manager issued an apology to the police for wasting tax payer dollars.

I came into work the next day to find the area underneath my desk in complete disarray. "What happened to my desk?" I asked Gigi, who sits next to me and had already been at work for thirty minutes by the time I casually rolled in.

"Um, you almost burned the building down," she said, and then she told me the story that everybody else had already heard that morning. For a moment, I sat there, stunned. For yet another moment I sat there, daydreaming, and wondered what kind of compensation package we employees could have received had there be an actual, devastating fire. If there had been an out and out fire, would they have traced it to my space heater and thus to me? Would I still get a compensation package? It would have, after all, been a completely innocent mistake on the part of the kind of woman who is usually very careful about fire safety and never, ever smokes in bed.

Regardless, everything is a-okay, and after apologizing a few times to the manager who had responded to the call (and making sure that my direct boss never had to be privy to the situation), I sat back down at my desk, plugged in my semi-defective space heater, turned it on to high, and started my usual morning business.