SHUT UPPP

How To Be Awesome #434: Put out a kitchen fire.

That's right, remember when I told you all those things about how my appliances are trying to kill/maim me? They went for the throat last week. I was hanging out in the living room with the Pug when I smelled something burning. I was kind of a weird kid back in the day so I'm familiar (or was back then at least) with the smell of melting plastic (I don't have to explain to you!). Anyway - I start wandering around in search of said melting plastic smell when I realize it's coming from the dishwasher. CRAP! It was on the "auto dry" setting or whatever where it heats up and dries your dishes for you so I grabbed the fire extinguisher which is inconveniently located in the sink, on the other side of the potential fire. Suck! I spent WAY too long examining the fire extinguisher trying to figure it out, making sure I knew which pin to pull, how to actually fire the thing, and which direction to point it in. Yeah that's right, I have total faith in the idea that my dishwasher can contain a fire for as long as it takes me to figure out the frickin fire extinguisher, what up? Anyway, I eventually opened the dishwasher and sure enough, there was a plastic lid to one of those Tupperware containers, burning away down at the bottom of the dishwasher, making all my stuff smell like gross burning plastic. It was totally not worthy of the fire extinguisher so I just grabbed a nearby cup of water and tossed it down in the bottom of the dishwasher. BOO! And then the apartment smelled like melted plastic for about four hours. But I'm a firefighter now and it's awesome.

We've been over the whole "I'm a sucky cook" thing before, so you're probably not surprised to learn that I microwave. Like, a lot. At least two meals a day. To be fair it's not always TV dinners (Hello, Smart Ones quesadillas! Yum!), there are plenty of times when it's yesterday's home-cooked meal (Orrrr last night's takeout leftovers, whatever.) that just needs a quick zap before it's ready to eat. Anyway - I'm familiar with my microwave. Just imagine my surprise when I went to heat up my earlier and - WTF?! - there's a gigantic crack in the plastic, right by the handle. Hoooooly crap, how long has that been there? I'm thinking it's rather new because it's pretty noticeable, but that can't be good, right? And the inside panel (the one with the window) isn't cracked at all, but it still seems totally plausible to me that every time I turn the microwave on crazy scary rays of radiation shoot out of the crack and bounce around my house. To make it even better, it's the kind that is mounted over the stove, so the death rays are on brain-level. Fan-freakin-tastic.

So yeah, not only do I probably glow in the dark and emit small amounts of radiation, Silkwood style (Oh sorry, is that completely wrong to say?), I also get to wander over to the property management office tomorrow and tell them to fix it. Look for the "My Apartment Company Sucks" blog, more than likely coming soon.

I'm in a fight with a vacuum cleaner. Two, actually. The most horrible part of being mad at a vacuum cleaner is how to describe said POS vacuum cleaner. I tried exclaiming "UGH! This vacuum SUCKS!" But...it doesn't, and that's the problem. But saying that something doesn't suck implies that it's actually good. So WTF? I lose. And now I'm just ranting, and it's just words, because I have no good way of explaining what the hell is up with the vacuum. It sucks because it doesn't suck. Vacuums suck, they SUCK! Also, "sucks" is the only word I can use to describe something I don't like. So don't even ask.

My stove is possessed!! Apparently some invisible gremlin has decided to screw with me and it's interfering with my eating habits so I'm not too thrilled. This morning I decided that I was going to have an egg for breakfast (that's right, one egg, what up?) so I turned on the stove and wandered around the kitchen while I let the oil and pan heat up. At this point let me just say that while I've had electric stoves everywhere I've lived for the past six years I grew up with gas stoves and I still suck at using the electric ones. I hate them. Anyway - I went to check the oil and it wasn't hot, which was weird because I could smell that the stove was on (Reason #234 why I hate electric stoves.) and then I noticed that the BACK burner was glowing orange. Crap, really? Ok, so I turned on the wrong burner, whatever. I moved the pan to the back burner, no big deal, cracked the egg and continued to wander around the kitchen and suddenly the egg is, like, turning black and there's smoke coming off the pan. WTF?! So I pick up the pan and the burner underneath has gone from "Sidewalk on a Summer Day" to "Solar Flare" glowing bright red. Seriously, stove?

So at this point I decided I'd made breakfast for the dog (You're welcome, Rygel!) and I would just have tea so I set the teapot on the other back burner (not the possessed one) and wandered off again. Ok, fine, when I say I "wandered off" I really mean I was sneaking chocolate chips. Anyway, five minutes later I check it and...nothing's happening. Boo! So I turn up the heat. Still nothing. I hate my stove. So I move the teapot, turn on the front burner, and stand there. I hear the water start to boil so I get out a mug and a teabag and wait. A second later, nothing. WHAT THE HELL!? I'm tired of playing Whack-A-Mole with my stove, trying to throw a teapot on whatever burner decides to heat up, so I turn on the possessed burner. Sure enough, in about three minutes I have tea. After one wasted egg, a blackened stainless steel pan, a stove that thinks it's playing Whack-A-Mole, and thirty minutes, I have tea. Tastes like victory.