Lights Out!
Went to a Laser Quest laser tag game last night, courtesy of Neil, who was celebrating his 12th birthday. I haven’t been to the place in years. Roaming the darkened, dimly fluorescent hallways of their laser tag hallways is still fun, but I found myself with very little less tolerance for the dim and the noise and the obnoxiously loud energy of the employees, and the 10-15 year old male demographic that their business gears to. The group of small children we went in with made for easy, slow-moving targets, and while the enthusiasm was there, there was really no challenge in shooting small, scurrying objects that might cry if you went at them too hard.
But the real excitement for the evening was getting home and finding out that half of our apartment power grid was out. No, not half the apartment units, just my specific, very special, individual apartment itself. Our overhead lights and kitchen worked okay (I suspect because the overhead is connected to the floor above, and the kitchen is linked to the side laundry room which was working), but everything else in the unit was kaput.
So, we lit a few candles, unplugged anything and everything that we dearly loved, and went out back to throw the circuit breakers for the unit. Turned all the lights out and back on again, but nada on making the ones that were permanently out work at all. Figuring that there was nothing to be done about it at night, we made do by running a long line from the bathroom plug to the bedroom just so that we could get internet back on and return to civilization again. I also left a few small candles running, because having half a power outrage was like having the fun of candles but still the connectivity of internet. Big mistake. My unguarded light sparked a fire on my TV stand while I made a late night snack, and the whole front of the stand before my TV was already up in flames by the time I heard a funny crackle coming from the living room. (At first I thought it was the cats batting something crinkly around.)
In a panic, I reached around and tried to lift my precious TV off the fire, and realized that its melting plastic bottom had glued itself to the fabric covering on the stand.
Clearly, blowing out the candles wasn’t going to work, so with no thought but of saving my previous LCD, I ran into the kitchen, wet a couple of towels, and ran back to smother the flame. It worked amazingly well, and after a couple moments I was able to separate the TV from the charred mess and rescue its remains. Other than having an ugly melted chunk missing off the front of the base, it’s actually okay, which made me relieved.
I suppose this was all a very good lesson in keeping flames contained, except that the candles had already been setup in what was supposed to be a secure container, and it was probably a freak circumstance that caused them to spark and catch fire. Okay, maybe I should only put flames where I can see them from now on, but I didn’t really learn anything new after all, because my TV was totally okay, and I didn’t get that painfully important lesson of losing or damaging a beloved material possession. Or burning the house down. Ironically, I always thought my apartment unit would go down in a blazing fire of electrical flames, but this one was actually caused by the lack of electricity running along my wall.
So, we still have no power in half the apartment, and keeping the windows open to get the burning smell out is making me freakin’ cold. But other than that, I seem to be unjustifiably happy about life.