How To: Reattach a Smoke Detector to the Ceiling

There was a note on my door this evening to call my apartment's main management office.  So I did.  It turns out I had to make an appointment for an annual walk through.  I happily made the appointment.  I hung up the phone and then turned to the next order of business: reattaching the smoke detector to the ceiling.

A few months ago, my parents had visited me in Atlanta.  I was taking a nap while my parents were cooking when I was jarred awake by the mechanical chirping of the smoke detector.  The smoke detector is extremely sensitive (a good quality, now that I think of it).  I jumped out of bed, opened my bedroom door, and with the precision of a plastic surgeon, I punched the smoke detector.  It sail ed across the apartment and landed onto the floor with a victoriously dull thud.

You know when you buy a stack of blank CDs or DVDs, you access them by rotating the cylindrical plastic container?  The same principle anchors the smoke detector to the ceiling.  Unfortunately, my technique of silencing the smoke detector broke off the plastic juts (I don't know how to exactly describe them, but you know what I mean).  That's why I haven't put the detector back.

Until now.

Equipment needed: two (2) bare hands, a Pilot Easy Touch click pen, crazy glue, a sharp knife, and time.  First, you snap off the part at the click end of the pen.  You know, the part that allows you to steady your pen in a breast pocket.  (It's also the part of a pen you tend to break off as a nervous habit.)  Take a sharp knife and divide that in two.  Apply crazy glue to back of smoke detector.  Mount broken pen parts to create new juts to anchor smoke detector to ceiling.  Wait a few minutes for crazy glue to dry.  Attach smoke detector to ceiling. 

Does it work?  Yes.  But how long will it last?  Until the next time I punch it off the ceiling.