Cook and Burn

How come everytime I try to cook the fire detector goes off? The food was only slightly black this time. My nervous roommate came downstairs to check on me. I was trying to circulate the air in the living room by waving a towel up and down in hopes the detector would stop beeping at me. A maintenance man could hear it from outside. He saw me waving my towel(where he came from I don't know). I opened the door to explain to him that everything was okay. It was kind of creepy that he was watching me through the window, but nice if there had been a problem.