Frustrating Friday

Well, really only because of the continuing dryer drama. I finally got someone to come out TODAY rather than tomorrow to check my dryer, which I feared was leaking gas. When he arrived, he said "that's what I was hoping it wasn't." Uh oh. Turns out it has a defective gas gauge in it, so it wasn't shutting off the gas when not in use. Hence the gas smell. So I am getting a new one tomorrow. This doesn't leave us much time to wash all the clothes we need for our week-long trip to the beach tomorrow. Sigh...I know we'll get it done, I'm just afraid it will involve us staying up way too late and being super tired on Sunday when we fly out. 

I am meeting my high school ex-boyfriend and his boyfriend for brunch tomorrow. That should be really fun, I haven't seen him since high school and we didn't talk for at least 3 years in there, just met up again on Facebook a few months ago. I'm bringing the boy as well, he never met a pancake he didn't like. 

Oh, update on the writing: I am now on page THREE, and it doesn't all suck, so that's progress. I have gotten past the opening scene and begun to introduce a second pivotal character. Yay, hopefully this will continue. Maybe not till I get back from vacation, but still. Yay.

Haiku News

Honda corp. recalls

four hundred forty thousand

more cars; maybe mine!

Airlines use cartoons,

body painted flight crews to

grab our attention.

Techie farmer saves

two hundred thousand dollars

using poo power.

Wild Wednesday

One plus of having my mom is around is for me to finally get the push I need to get going on a few things on my to-do list. The first one was to get someone in to look at a few of my annoying appliances. Fortune smiled on me most in the kitchen, where I had a broken-but-replaceable part in my fridge and discovered the storage drawer under my stove is actually a broiler drawer--who knew? 

My luck ended when the guy took a look at my washer and dryer. Apparently it's a miracle that my house hasn't burned down yet, since my vent and dryer were packed full of lint. If you haven't had your dryer vent cleaned lately, please do me a favor and have it cleaned!! He showed me a handful of scorched black lint from the bottom of my dryer...scary stuff. Long story short: we became the owners of a brand-new washer and dryer. At least now they'll work. Sigh.

Grammar Geek-out Wednesday #3

3. Define verse, stanza, and paragraph.

Great, a nice short one this week. I'm not sure if I'll know exactly what the 1895 definitions are but I'll just do the modern ones, OK?

Verse has a lot of definitions. Let's list a few.

1. a line of a poem

2. a poem

3. metrical writing.

4. metrical writing distinguished from poetry by its inferior quality

5. a particular type of metrical writing, such as elegiac verse.

6. the collective poetry of an author, nation, etc: Shakespearean verse; American verse

and so on.

a stanza is like the paragraph of poetry--it forms its divisions. It is usually at least four lines and has meter, a rhyme scheme, or both.

a paragraph is a portion of written matter dealing with a particular idea, signified by an indent in the text.

Haiku News

Book challenge whips up

debate over sex content;

what freedom of speech?

Judge rules the exam

to become New York's Bravest

discriminated.

After riding train,

dragged behind homeless's bike,

shark found in the street.

Moments of failure...

My husband and I had some dear friends over for dinner last night. I asked them to bring dessert and I would make dinner. I have a stack of largely neglected cookbooks from which I chose a never-before-attempted recipe to try on them. I was feeling pretty good by about 5:00, with 2 1/2 hours before they were due to show up, and most of my prep work done. However, I didn't count on my crappy range top failing me yet again. We have gas appliances, and this particular range and oven seems to be the bottom of the line. Several burners tend to go out entirely when you are merely trying to turn them down, and the oven doesn't even have any sort of alert to tell you when it has reached the temperature you are trying to get it to. Last night I discovered that the fume hood is also crap. I was sauteing my chicken breasts and the bottom of the pan slowly began to blacken. I was a bit worried about this development, but they were really fat chicken breasts so I knew they had awhile longer to cook before they would be done in the middle.

I continued to ignore the building smoke as I prepared the rest of the meal, until the security system alarm started going off. Apparently it has a smoke detector portion as well, and the chicken-smoke had set it off. I punched in the code to cancel it and returned to my range top. I kid you not, less than a minute later it went off again. This happened at least 4 or 5 times, and then the security monitoring center called the house to ask if everything was OK. This call was fragmented since apparently when your alarm goes off (and it kept going off while I was trying to talk to the guy), it cuts off the call. That's about the dumbest thing I've ever heard. When I finally assured the guy everything was OK, he said he'd cancel the fire department call, but they were already outside. I was still in the kitchen but I heard the fireman laugh when my husband explained the situation, saying, "Oh, she can't cook, eh?" To Bill's credit, he defended my cooking skills.

Happily, the evening worked out well, but as the fire truck was pulling away from our house I had a moment where I felt completely and hopelessly inadequate. My child was screaming in terror from the impossibly loud alarm, my dinner looked to be burning, and I was in tears. I feel fortunate not to have more of these moments, but pardon my diction when I say they suck big time.

As I was writing this post, my husband had turned on the oven to heat a frozen pizza, and the alarm started going off again. Apparently the infinitesimal bit of drippings on the oven floor gave off just a hint of smoke...so now I can't use my oven. Lovely. Sigh.