WarKitty

Mmmm meat *drools*

Mental note: don’t actually give your most prized possession to a shaman- how is he going to know?

My wife left town for two weeks- she does this every year. This means that I have to fend for myself- in the kitchen. “No problem!” I think.

So it’s off to the store I go, I come up with something on the fly that I can cook once and continue eating for a week. I get rice pilaf, veggies and some chicken.

I cook the chicken, dice the veggies, drop in the rice, yadda yadda. Everything is going great. Just as I’ve combined all of the ingredients and I start stirring the pot, I notice the smell of burning plastic. It’s coming from the burner.

Our burners tend to stink when you turn them up anyway,and I noticed a small chunk on it. That’s when I noticed the dimple in the plastic spoon that I was using to stir the pot. Sure enough- I somehow managed to touch the spoon to the burner, then stir the food.

I figured that not much plastic could have gotten in there, and I let my meal simmer for the required hour.

Literally my first spoonful of this meal had a pellet of plastic in it. I had hoped that was all. I had a bite or two, then I found a streak of plastic. Maybe that was all of it. I still hadn’t eaten any plastic at this point- at least not enough to taste. Then I finally got a taste of it, and decided that the whole pot of food was tainted.

So, I have a few choices at this point- buy all of the food again, and try cooking the same meal without burning it. (It ended up being a bit bland, so maybe not). I could go a whole different route, and not cook mass quantities…. I could find food that doesn’t require cooking… well, basically, the world is my oyster, so long as I am capable of cooking it. But I don’t want oysters- they’re yucky! I could probably starve myself, then tell my wife how amazing apidexin is.

I’m think I’ll just get a bunch of raw vegetables and some ranch dip and call that a meal for the next week or so. At the very least, I’m not going to try cooking anything large for a few days. And if I went to the grocery store tomorrow and bought all of the exact same stuff, I bet they’d think I was a little crazy.

Ah, the Colbert Report- one of the few shows I haven’t seen much of since I dropped cable TV in favor of streaming internet videos. It was something like $50 a month for 70 channels- four of which we actually watched. I’d totally pay for a handful of channels- if it cost around $2 per channel per month. Let’s face it- this shotgun approach to entertainment is like a doctor making you take fifty medications when all you actually need is eczema treatment or dandruff shampoo. Fortunately, pretty much every show that I like is available online in one form or another- I just have to remember to actually watch the show now. Speaking of watching shows… I think I’ll catch up with Steven Colbert right now.

Okay, so why am I calling the houseplant crazy, you ask? It’s not that I think that it’s crazy- but my cats certainly do. When I first brought the plant home, one cat looked at it like it was a monster. After I found a place for it in my house, one of the cats spent an hour just sitting under it. Then things got interesting.

Once the cats decided that they were comfortable with the plant, the inevitable happened- they tried to attack it and eat it. Luckily, I found the trusty squirt bottle. The cats have been so good for so long that I’m not sure if they remember it or not. So, when I see the cats trying to eat the houseplant, I covertly squirt them. I’m convinced that they think the plant is what’s squirting them, and not me. You should see the crazy looks they give the plant now.

The other day I bought a houseplant. But not just any houseplant- I bought a ‘peace lily’. For the record, I’m a dude, and not the type of dude who you’d expect to be caught nurturing something called a ‘peace lily’. A peacemaker, maybe.

So why the sudden interest in botany? Because the first two words on the tag attached to the plant said ‘Air Purifier’. It’s now 110 outside with overnight lows in the high 90′s. Arizona summers rock. Also, we’ve just started using the air conditioner, which recirculates air in the house.

Now, I have a really stinky roommate- he’s an old dude, and he gives the phrase ‘dirty old man’ a very literal new meaning. This guy’s a total slob.

My roommate is so funky that we had to finally break down and buy him some soap, then leave it in his bathroom with a note so that he would actually use it. Dude has literally had the same bar of soap in his shower for over a year. He used to be a sailor, and he still showers like he lives on a boat.

Add all of this up, and you can see why I bought an air purifying houseplant.