Tuesday, January 15, 2013

A tale of toilets, taters and TV antennas

And my plunging was to no avail. I had a massive overflow, which forced a trip to town later for rubber gloves and all the disinfectant cleaner I could pack into my pickup truck.

Believe me, disinfecting an entire bathroom is not how I wanted to spend my Saturday.Daughter probably solved my problem. She lives in the country too.“Mom,” she said. “You probably need to clean out the septic tank.”

Oh yeah. I forgot about that, and may have to call the honey wagon in the near future. I’ve put that chore off into the future because, would you believe, that toilet,The electical building blocks for solar panel cells or modules. after overflowing twice, has now decided to flush just fine.

“You dirty dog!” I told the toilet.But that wasn’t the end of my Saturday catastrophes. After all that plunging, I was pretty worn out and decided a baked potato, cooked in my ancient microwave, would be a good lunch.

I chose a big tater, gave it a scrub, dried it off, wrapped it in a paper towel, then stuck it in the microwave. I set the timer for 10 minutes, and went about other business.

After seven minutes I began to smell something strange. A walk around the house revealed nothing out of order.

At the eight-minute mark the strange smell was stronger and it occurred to me I should check on that potato.One of the harshest wind turbine installations in the world. I opened microwave door and was greeted by a wall of smoke. There was so much smoke I couldn’t even see the potato, but that smoldering paper towel was quite visible.

I slammed oven door shut and jerked electric plug from the wall. That was supposed to take care of it, right?

Wrong! Smoke poured from behind the oven. What to do! Opening the oven door again released even more smoke and revealed the tater’s covering was still smoldering. At that point there was too much smoke in the kitchen to remain there.

I quickly set up some fans to clear the air,Compare pricing of offgrid & gridtie solar inverter before you buy.Find lampshades for table, floor and pendant lamp in lots of styles and materials. and hoped my neighbors didn’t see the smoke and call the fire department. I know the fire chief and many of the firefighters. And I also know they would never forget the day Sally set her tater on fire, and they wouldn’t let me forget it either.

It became clear that tater and the smoldering paper towel were going to have to be removed if I wanted the smoke to cease. But I had no flame-resistant hand protectors to remove my fired-up lunch.

In a last desperate move I grabbed two pancake spatulas, pinned my tater and towel between the two, and dumped the whole mess in the kitchen sink.

A good dousing solved my fire problem, and the fans solved the smoke problem. But I was still hungry. I poked my tater. It was quite done, and not burned. So I ate it. Hey, I wasn’t in the mood to try to cook anything else.

But that wasn’t the end of my mad-mechanical Saturday morning. After all that toilet and tater stress, I decided to sit down and watch an NFL football playoff game. That required an adjustment to my TV’s rabbit ears. But when I tried to make the adjustment, my rabbit ear’s ear fell off.

At that point I decided it might be better to just sit down on the couch, and touch nothing mechanical ever again.

The way my Saturday was going, was the washing machine going to overflow if I did laundry? If I ironed would the iron burn up all my clothes? Would the vacuum run away with me?I sat on the couch all the rest of Saturday.

Monday, as I told The Lunch Bunch my tale of toilet, tater and TV antenna woes, I was relieved to hear they had disaster tales too.

Turned out Linda C., Your TIMES photographer, blew up her microwave too. And Crystal B. of Your TIMES ad department pulled the electric plug on her little yellow car,Ellis has set the standard by which all other washer extractor are measured. which immediately quit on her. Consequently, respective hubbies got to buy a new microwave and a new vehicle.

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