Reasons I probably shouldn't drink tea

(18 October 2006)

And in completely classic "me" fashion...I have managed to have yet another adventure with my apartment. Only, this adventure involves something that I didn't install!

I finished dinner and I was like "hmm, I should make some tea, it will make doing my homework marginally less painful if I can at least drown an animal cracker every once in a while." So naturally I put water in the tea kettle, and put it on the stove.

Here's where it gets exciting:
I turn on the burner (*gasp*) and I hear a little hissing, and I'm like..."huh, my burner doesn't usually hiss." So I turned it off and back on and go back to pretending I'm going to do my dishes. Well, as soon as I get the sponge in hand I hear a huge pop, see a big flash and blue flames start shooting out of all of my burners! This wouldn't be so shocking if I had a gas stove, but hi, my stove is electric. Since I don't really have a penchant for getting electrocuted (and thankfully was not touching the stove at the time), I chose flight and ran out of my kitchen before the stove had a chance to stop smoking, all the while thanking myself for upping my renter's insurance.

So I look back in the kitchen as I freak out and try to remember if fire extinguishers are useful for electrical fires...or if I should call the fire house...or if I should call the maintenance guy, i.e. my very cute neighbor who knows less about electrical fires than Taco does (Taco is my betta fish). The stove lets off its last little puff of white smoke and I don't see any more blue flames at least, so options 1 and 2 are out. And Kyle's not home. And neither of the landlords are answering their phones, and they don't have voicemail either. So, we're really working our way down the chain of command here, and I finally get to calling my dad, who is, of course, in the shower. Fortunately, he showers much faster than any normal person, i.e. anyone who uses soap.

He tells me to go downstairs and flip my fuses, at which point I get to tell him about how old school and awesome (and by awesome I mean poorly designed/dangerous) my fuses are, i.e. they look like they could have been original components for the ENIAC (that's the first computer..by popular vote). So I yank out the stove fuse, which I wouldn't have known was even a fuse because it didn't even remotely resemble the other fuses in the box. Fuses look completely fine...a tad dusty, but no sign of an obviously burnt fuse.

At this point, I'm just glad to have the electricity turned off to my stove, because I didn't want to encourage it to burn for any longer, mostly because I hadn't had a chance to rescue my photo albums and Taco. So I rush back upstairs to make sure it's not burning, and thankfully, it's not burning. My kitchen smells like burning electronics, and I'm sure as hell not touching the stove to ensure that it's all normal. I've been watching it for about an hour, though, and my kitchen hasn't gone up in flames yet. Maybe I should move Taco into the hallway just in case.

I'd love to have some dramatic ending to this story, possibly involving a hot firefighter sweeping me off my feet, but I'm hungry, so I'm going to the store to stock up on TV dinners and other assorted foods that can be microwaved. Mmm, charred tea.