listening to the UPS

I got a UPS this summer, after my second try at a special guaranteed-no-glare-no-flicker lamp flickered and gave me migraines. The lamp company thought the first one might be defective, and replaced it, but eventually told me there were limits to their powers. Once I plugged the fancy lamp into a UPS, I had fewer migraines from flickering lamps, which was wonderful news and/or a damning indictment of the wiring in this building. When my neighbors were using their air conditioners, the UPS would quietly buzz and beep all afternoon, but it didn't bother me because I had steady light and no seizures.

During this morning's storm, there was a noise. Vicki woke up and asked me if it was my phone? The alarm wasn't supposed to go off for another 3 minutes. (And it doesn't chirp, it plays music.) Maybe it's a neighbor's alarm? A truck backing up? A smoke alarm calling for a new battery? It took some sleepy fumbling around to realize the UPS was chirping because its power supply had been interrupted. It really sounds distressingly like a smoke alarm calling for a new battery, only you can't just feed it a battery and be done with it. The building power came back in less than 10 minutes this morning, but I may need to reconsider my old strategy of sleeping through power outages.