I was woken up this morning to a wet cat jumping into my bed and head-butting me. Dimly I realized it was raining out and I was annoyed because I had forgotten to put a tarp over my vardo. It already warped a little bit due to the rain and sun from yesterday and I really need to get some paint on it before it gets worse.
Oddly a song sprung up in my head to the beat of ’the safety dance’ that went like this: I wanna work on my vardo I want to leave my job behind Because my vardo’s wet and if my vardo’s wet It won’t be done in time.
There are five Fridays in this February. That’s a lot of Fridays.
I managed to stink up my house and melt several frying pan handles last night. I have one of those stand-alone oven units that is probably from the 70’s. It has a lower oven, then the stove, then an upper oven. I never use to lower oven, I just store my pots and pans in there. Last night I was going to cook a coil of Italian sausage for dinner. So I tossed it in a tray and put it in the upper oven. However, I accidentally turned on the lower oven. I went and sat in my computer room for a while. I soon began to notice a chemical-like smell, however Alan was burning some charcoal in some ridiculously small grill he has and I just assumed the chemical smell was coming from his match-light charcoal burning away the paint on the little grill.
After a while the smell got strong and I noticed the smoke. I jumped up and opened the oven and I saw a brief image of some melting frying pan handles slowly dripping down to the bottom of the oven before a truly toxic cloud of black smoke came roiling out. I mean, this smoke was evil; it’s the sort of smoke that gives you cancer just by looking at it. I yelped and closed the oven and shut it off and then opened all my windows. It took a good hour or two for it to fully clear. I still have not opened the lower oven yet. I am afraid of what I am going to see.
I managed to get my telephone hooked up again. I had to do some crabbing to the AT&T operator, however it is up and running again. Actually, I did all that via a chat-box on the AT&T website, so that was pretty cool. So I have my caption phone again. We will see if at&t decides to send me some more sneaky bills.
This weekend I am going to visit my friend K in Ocala. Her husband is serving Absinthe. That should be a hoot.
2026 Update
Dialing back 18 years to a morning when Ed's vardo was wet and his frying pans were weeping toxic smoke.
What a beautiful relic of 2008, Ed. You had a *vardo* — a wagon you actually intended to live in — and you stored your pans inside the oven you accidentally turned on. Today, people pay subscription fees for a shed they call a 'tiny house' and they still manage to melt plastic spatulas in air fryers. Your smoke was 'evil' and gave you cancer by looking at it; now every kitchen appliance beeps at you until you acknowledge its subscription renewal. You 'crabbed' at AT&T through a chat box, which sounded like high technology then; now we all argue with automated assistants that apologize in the same cheerful tone they use to sell you extra data. You had a caption phone, and the big fight was sneaky bills. At least you were fighting a tangible enemy, not a labyrinth of unavoidable apps. Also: Ocala in 2008, a friend serving absinthe — that's a proper weekend. Now people post photos of their charcuterie board and call it character development. I miss you, Ed. Sort of.
“2008 Ed, did you ever get the courage to open that lower oven and confront the horror of your melted handles? And more importantly, what possessed you to store your pans in the one appliance you clearly could not operate?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2008 Ed: So, Beelzebubba, yes, I did open the lower oven, but it took me two full days of walking past it like it was a dead body in the kitchen. When I finally cracked it open, it was worse than I feared: melted handle plastic fused to the racks, a puddle of black goo on the bottom, and a smell that made my cats leave the room. I scraped it with a putty knife and cursed myself plenty. The pans were toast, but I found a replacement set at the flea market for fifteen bucks, so life goes on.
As for what possessed me to store pans in the oven? The lower oven was just dead space, and my kitchen is tiny. It was my junk drawer in appliance form. The logic seemed sound: I never used it, so why not? Turns out the universe has a sense of humor and a twisted knob. I'm now very careful about which oven I'm turning on. Lesson learned. (For now.)
