|
one small event There are days when just one small event can cast a shadow over the rest of the day for me and that is exactly what happened to me late this morning. I was going to make some baked cod only to discover that my stove wasn't working, but I didn't realize this at first. I had placed the fish into the stove turned it on and walked away not thinking that anything was wrong. Then when I came back about fifteen minutes later just to take a peek I opened the door only to smell gas. There wasn't any heat coming from out of the oven, but there was a strong odor. Well, I knew that this wasn't right and quickly turned the gas off. Then I tried the burners and they didn't work either. I could hear the gas coming out, but there wasn't any flame. I thought that maybe the pilot light had gone out since my landlord had briefly turned the heat off yesterday when he installed the central air, but I wasn't sure. Appliances are not my area of expertise. Now that I think about it some more, I wonder if I should mention to my landlord the strange noises that my refrigerator makes on a regular basis. When Tracy and I lived together, the refrigerator stopped working and wasn't fixed for a day. I'm not sure if I could have taken him to court for it, but there were so many things about that place that I found awful and just want to forget. On the other hand it would have been nice if he would have offered to compensate us for all of the food that we lost. So I thought about who I could call to help me out with my stove problem. I didn't want to sound like a complete idiot and call my landlord only to find out that it was somthing simple to fix, so I waited until later in the day to speak with my dad. When I told my dad about the problem, I neglected to mention that the landlord had briefly shut the gas off yesterday and he thought that maybe something was wrong with the stove itself, but after we talked some more he was pretty sure that it was just the pilot lights. So after talking with both my dad and the landlord, I discovered that there are two pilot lights not one for the burners and I was back in business. My landlord apologized for the inconvenience and said that he had forgotten that I had a gas stove. Something about sticking my head in an oven is a disturbing feeling even if I am doing it for a good reason. Visions of me becoming a human torch flashed through my mind and that was not something that I wanted to experience firsthand. Charred human flesh is not a pleasant sight and I am thankful that I have only seen it once. Years ago when I was in the hospital, the boy in the bed next to me was a burn victim. Somehow or other he had managed to burn a portion of his chin and it was probably the most bizarre thing that I had ever seen in my life at that time. Here was I was sitting next to someone that had been on fire and it bothered me, but once I got used to it talking with Ray wasn't that odd. Part of the evening was spent talking with Jose and Steve for the first time since Christmas. It seems that they had a more eventful New Year's Eve than I did. Instead of having management pacing around them for hours, Jose got to watch a white version of Steve Urkel hit on his girlfriend all night. He found it amusing, Jenny did not. With the unseasonably warm temperatures and rain today, the southern part of the state is barren once more which prompted my three year old niece to ask if winter was over. Hmm. If only that were true, but we still have to get through February and March. Plus snow in April isn't that uncommon either. For some unknown reason, I took a look back at what I was doing a year ago and the year before that on the ninth. Two years ago I was dropping Brenda head first into a snowbank. Then one year ago I was heading out to Los Angeles for a week. Now I am busy playing games with a gas stove. I guess that I can stop looking for any kind of pattern here. Maybe I had inhaled more gas than I thought or maybe I was just tired, but most of the day was spent in a haze. As for my list of things to do for the week, I've only crossed off four so far.
|