The 25th Hour

When I was in high school there was this club in a nearby city called "The 25th Hour" and on certain nights it was for under 18's, meaning high schoolers could go as no alcohol would be served. They had these radio ads that ran which used the song "the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire" as part of their, I guess, jingle.

Well, the other night at my apartment the roof was, almost, on fire. In my attempts to be more frugal I have decided to eat most of my meals at home, which I realized was going to involve me finally cooking something other than Campbell's soup and Kraft Mac 'n Cheese. So, I decided to bake a potato, and this being a modern era (and the fact that my oven has never quite worked right since there was a fire in there---this one not my fault) I decided to bake it in the microwave. I put said potato on a plate and set the microwave off to do its job. Since I put it in for a good 10 minutes, I decided to go into the living room to eat my salad while it cooked. Well, after a good amount of time my roommate (who, thank goodness was doing dishes in the kitchen) called out, "um, I think you should come in here." As soon as I got up I could see black smoke billowing out of the microwave. I immediately ran over turned it off and unplugged it, got the fire extinguisher out from under the sink and instructed my roommate to dismantle the smoke detector and open all the windows in the apartment.

And then I just stood there waiting....

For what, I'm not sure. Maybe for the fire to exit the safely contained confines of the box, or maybe for it to explode, I'm not sure. Thank goodness it didn't explode, or leave the confines of the box. It eventually burned itself out leaving the acrid smell of fire in our apartment along with the lingering smoke that was still billowing around the ceiling. When I eventually felt it was safe to open the door of the microwave it was to discover the potato still intact, but practically disintegrated and the plate it was sitting on charred to a crisp. Apparently the plate wasn't microwave safe. Okay. Well, lesson learned, do not heat non-microwave safe dishes beyond a certain point in the microwave lest they start a toxic-smelling fire.

Happily, the microwave is still operational, and 3 days later the smell of smoke has practically dissipated from the apartment. However, I think I'll stick to soup and pasta for now until I muster up the courage to attempt cooking again.