Bring the Heat!
The smell of meat being seared over high heat, followed by the aroma of a slow-roasting pot roast mingled with caramelizing sugar and brewing dark-roast coffee are pleasant smells in a nice restaurant, perhaps a high-end steakhouse. They are quite alarming, however, when they're emanating from the heating grate in your floor.
That's what we awoke to this morning at the Blue Artichoke homestead. I dreamt of pot roast; now I know why.
Obviously something was burning somewhere within the heat ducts, but how dangerous it could be was anyone's guess. When the smoke alarm started blaring, I started to get concerned. Whatever down there wasn't just burning, it was smoking. I dismantled the smoke detector, turned off the heat and called the landlord, in that order. I started worrying about smoke inhalation. I couldn't see any smoke, but there was obviously enough to make the smoke detector go haywire. Then I started worrying about an explosion: we have gas heat and something was burning that wasn't supposed to burn. I decided that was silly, and went on with my morning (though I did bring up Fat Larry's pet carrier in case we had to make a hasty exit). My landlord came over, thumped and cursed at the furnace and declared a seized motor, easy to fix (tomorrow). In the meantime, we still have heat, just no fan to blow it through the ducts, so it drifts lazily up into the living room. Better than nothing.
I sure could go for some pot roast.