Alarming First Day

On the first day in our new home, I found a binder with information about the house and its accouterments. Of special interest right away was the instruction manuals for the hot water heater, the central air, the security alarm, and the oven. I started reading through the binder during the children's naps.

I read through the hot water heater and central air manual so we could get both of those running. Both run through one panel, hence only one manual. Both had been set to the bare minimum while the house was unoccupied. Normally in the Northern hemisphere in late July, one would think heating the indoors would not be an issue. We live in England, however. The house, especially the ground floor, was a little bit chilly. Getting both running was critical to a happy household. Reprogramming the timer was not too hard.

By contrast, this phalanx of wall outlets are pretty intimidating and manualless.

I started reading through the instructions for the security alarm. I moved on to the oven instructions. Suddenly, I heard an alarm outside. It didn't sound like it was coming from our house, but I rushed to check lest the children wake up. Checking our security panel at the front door, nothing seemed wrong. I went outside and saw that the outside alarm was flashing on the neighbors' house. No one seemed to be home. I hoped the alarm would go off soon. Luckily, the children's rooms are on the back of our townhouse, so they had some shielding from the street noise.

After about five minutes, I heard a police alarm in the distance. I worried that it would wake up the children when they arrived. The police car never showed up on our street so the kids were okay. After about ten minutes, the alarm mysteriously went. I hope this is not a usual occurrence in our neighborhood.

I went back to figuring out the oven. There's an awful lot of settings that are fairly inexplicable. The manual has names for the settings (like "economy grill function" and "MLTF function") but no pictures or symbols. The oven's dial has symbols but no names.

Any help from hieroglyphics experts would be greatly appreciated. We don't want the economy to be undercooked. More importantly, we don't want to ruin the baked oatmeal on Saturday! If there are any tragedies, you will probably read about them here. If there are any comedies, you will definitely read about them here.