but where's the fireman?!
Well, got *that* out of the way. It just so happens that I have this weird habit/curse with every home I've ever had. It seems I have a knack for almost burning it down. I stress the almost lest anyone think I'm a pyro. Or in case my insurance agent is reading my blog. He he. (wipes brow nervously, clears throat and looks furtively to the right and left...)
In my first apartment in Carrboro, NC, I lit a log in the fireplace (according to instructions, mind you) and it got a little carried away. I think I burned a small hole in the carpet. In my first apartment with Paul in Chapel Hill, I lit a candle in the bathroom and placed it in a WOODEN container. How friggin brilliant was that?! That's right, put something that is on fire in a wooden container. It's not flammable or anything. Duh.
In the townhouse in Northbrook, I left a candle burning (again, in the bathroom) overnight, and as the wick burned down the flame got bigger and lit the towel hanging above it. Again, I get major points for intelligence on this one. Light a candle UNDER a towel?! Nice.
Tonight, as I cooked my first real dinner (as opposed to warming up taquitos in the toaster oven - that clearly doesn't count as cooking) I decided to multi-task and left the rice to boil figuring I had enough time to dry my hair. Wrong. All of sudden, the house smelled like popcorn, and I raced downstairs to see that the rice had boiled and all the water had, in fact, evaporated. And the bottom of the pot was burnt. Ah, yes.
At least I got it out of the way. Amazingly, the rice came out perfectly! Ha! And so, I sat down to eat a scrumptious meal - polynesian chicken and rice.
A sigh of contentment escaped from deep within my chest...
Comments
yum, polynesian chicken :9
you were lucky to have the rice turn out all right. my sister and I had quite a few episodes of burnt rice in the last while we've lived together. she lets me cook it now (I don't seem to burn it as much). once we had a pot of rice that burned so badly that the whole pot (along with the rest of the house) picked up the acrid taste of smoke. It was inedible.
sad.
Posted by: dan jones | February 14, 2006 10:06 PM
To protect the innocent, I won't name any names, but I know someone who's home has been visited by the firemen so many times, they've threatened to charge. No full-on fires, just pots left on the stove long enough to trigger the alarm.
Posted by: shokufeh | February 14, 2006 06:04 PM
Yeah I gotta agree there, that is a pretty good story.
Who makes wooden candle holders, that's what I want to know.
Posted by: lacey | February 14, 2006 10:56 AM
ok, nas. you win. i love you for leaving this comment. you brought a huge laugh to my belly!
Posted by: delara | February 14, 2006 12:47 AM
ok, you got nothin' on me. basically, i come from a family of pyromaniacs. being the youngest of my maniacal sisters, i was a total pyrophobe growing up. but sometime in high school i forced myself to start lighting matches and be OK w/ certain controlled flames.
however, my total pyro-incompetence rears its ugly head from time to time. on saturday night, i cleaned out my drawers and i had a stack of bills to get rid of. i don't have a paper shredder and i didn't want to go to the trouble of marking through all the info. by hand and cutting them up myself. so i decided to burn them in a stainless steel bowl. (you can start laughing at me now if you want)
not wanting to set off the smoke detector in the kitchen, i closed my room door and opened the window. then i lit the paper. when the flame started to go crazy and smoke started going everywhere, i held the bowl out the window. then the bowl started getting really hot (why i didn't anticipate that, i dunno), so i held it by it's handle (thank God it had one).
it would seem that i had a reasonable amount of control over the sitaution. but, of course, it was snowing and windy, so all the ashes and pieces of singed paper blew back into my room. it was lovely.
luckily, i didn't burn anything down and i didn't have to drop the flaming bowl onto the street 5 stories below. i did, however, have to clean my room after that. and, incidentally, it all probably amounted to less effort than trying to shred the papers by hand -- though there was a slightly higher risk of fire the way i did things.
seriously, with my intelligence level, how did i get as far as i am in life?
Posted by: nas | February 13, 2006 10:54 PM
I do this on a regular basis...think that I have more time to do things than I actually do, and end up with things burning/overflowing/exploding.
It makes for interesting cooking stories, I guess. :-)
Posted by: Sholeh | February 13, 2006 04:30 PM
I love that you said the house smelled like popcorn. That is the EXACT first thing I smell before smelling an actual fire!
Posted by: +mojan. | February 13, 2006 02:09 PM
Polynesian contentment. My favorite kind.
Posted by: george | February 12, 2006 09:01 PM