Dream with Our Eyes Open

So this is how our (Memorial Day) holiday weekend ended:

1. We discovered that our refrigerator has died (just before I went off to go grocery shopping, which I suppose beats having it happen after I returned with the groceries) and

2. While I was ordering a new fridge online, we discovered that the attic exhaust fan had burned itself up.

The second event was definitely the more melodramatic. The Mr. called down from upstairs "I smell plastic burning!" The Young Lady (who was going to accompany me to the grocery store) and I called back "nothing is burning down here!" We all snooped around the upper floor and found nothing burning, but the smell was definitely stronger around the ceiling vents (where the house air conditioning comes out). The Mr. got a ladder from the basement, put on his headlamp (don't laugh - it's a very useful item in many circumstances), climbed up to the ceiling hatch for the attic, popped the hatch, and yelled "Get a fire extinguisher!" I fetched one from the kitchen, and he put out the (small but smelly) fire and disconnected the fan.

Meanwhile, we have hooked up the Young Lady's half-height fridge (just recently retrieved from her university dorm) and are trying to decide what is worthy of being moved into it. The volume is probably only a quarter of the larger unit's, and even less in the freezer compartment.

I guess something else could still happen - there's more than 3 hours of holiday weekend left!

I don't believe in rice cookers. I know how to make rice, dammit. But I scorch it maybe 4 to 6 times per year, so the Mr. bought me a rice cooker to prevent this calamity. To put this statistic in perspective, you should note that I make rice an average of twice a week ... . He was tactful enough, at least, not to buy it as a Mother's Day or birthday gift - but enough of a guy to proudly point out that he hadn't bought it for that sort of occasion.

But I digress.

Anyway, tonight, because our stove is dead (it's a sordid tale involving mice, and a socket wrench, and old wiring ... don't ask), I was forced to use the rice cooker.

I managed to scorch the rice.

I think the problem was that I left it on "warm" too long - the manual didn't give any estimates for how long it would take the rice to cook, so I ended up having to let it sit while the meat finished cooking. But let me tell you, I felt a really bizarre sort of triumph in pointing out to the Mr. that rice cookers do not prevent scorched rice ... .