Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Yesterday

I got a new whistling teakettle to replace the one that leaked. This one is quite pretty as well as doing its job very well. It is Chinese-built, of course (duh), so hopefully I won't develop a new flipper (sigh). I will try to post a photo later as soon as I clean up the mess on my stovetop. Which is not just the mess caused by the old teakettle leaking but...

When heating up soup yesterday evening, the left front electric burner *exploded*! Seems that the water from the leaking teakettle had somehow gotten into the supposedly-sealed burner element itself during the time that the burner was flooded by the leaking teakettle. Now, what happens when you put superheated steam into a practically sealed container? Ka-BOOM! It sent the pot flying, and spread powdered ceramic and little pieces of resistive wire all over the friggin' stovetop, as well as soup. I mopped up the worst, but I need to go find a new burner and put the stovetop back together...

While settling in for my afternoon nap yesterday, I heard some purring. I looked down at the foot of the bed and The Mighty Fang was alternately grooming Mencken and snuggling against his chest. I thought, "how sweet, TMF loves grooming Mencken so much that he's purring about it." I reached down and checked under TMF's chin. No vibration. I checked under Mencken's chin. Vibrating up a storm. The ornery old coot actually let himself enjoy being groomed for a change! To understand how unusual this is, TMF and Mencken have lived together in my home for five years now. Mencken is a couple of years older than TMF and I brought TMF home because Mencken was always following me around whining that I wasn't giving him enough attention and I figured he needed a buddy and what better buddy than a big lovable lunk of a kitty who wants nothing more than to groom everyone and everything? Bad judgement on my part -- Mencken was, like, "bah humbug" at that notion, wanting nothing to do with TMF, submitting to the occasional grooming from TMF with laid-back ears and an expression of distaste before finally getting so irritated that he'd whack TMF with his claws to make him go away. So this is sort of a breakthrough for Mencken. Maybe he's finally figured out that TMF isn't there to steal his food (Mencken is a former feral, thus is paranoid about that whole food thing)...

-- Badtux the Diarist Penguin

1 comment:

  1. I've had an electric burner blow up on me. And I was boiling water in a pot at the time. The pot was made of metal, so it stayed on the stove. But the burner burned a hole right through it, the water drained out, bluish light lit up the room, evil noises were unleashed, and I almost wet myself.

    Other than all that, everything was fine...

    ReplyDelete

Ground rules: Comments that consist solely of insults, fact-free talking points, are off-topic, or simply spam the same argument over and over will be deleted. The penguin is the only one allowed to be an ass here. All viewpoints, however, are welcomed, even if I disagree vehemently with you.

WARNING: You are entitled to create your own arguments, but you are NOT entitled to create your own facts. If you spew scientific denialism, or insist that the sky is purple, or otherwise insist that your made-up universe of pink unicorns and cotton candy trees is "real", well -- expect the banhammer.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.