Heh. About a week ago I made spagetti. Got distracted by someone asking a question. Set a plastic bowl on the still very hot burner… for the second time.
Yes, I didn’t learn the first time I melted something plastic by putting it on a hot burner. I am a slow learning in the kitchen.
When the weather was at it’s coldest a few weeks back, we finally (at my urging) closed our door at work and hung a sign on it telling people that we WERE really open, come in where it’s warm! My boss went to lunch, and jokingly mentioned that she almost walked into the door when she came back. Then I went to lunch, and as I walked back in the store I looked at the display window to make sure everything was okay…and walked straight into the glass door, full force, and left a faceprint that my boss left up there for TWO WEEKS!!! My forehead and nose and chin were very sore for several days, and it was all the more embarassing becasue I’m the one who pushed for the door to be shut.
So, I just typed (minus one finger) a nice, long, descriptive, gory description of how I are a moran. Then, my computer went into powersaver mode because my sister had unplugged it without telling me. I lost everything. I am not typing it all again.
So, this morning, I cut off a large chunk of my fingertip. Blood, pain, drug test, alcohol test, bandages, gel-foam, splint, light-duty work note, and here I am now.
Good times.
I’m just wondering what you did to get green.
I’ve never had that problem with a butyl lithium reaction (actually, I don’t think I’ve ever run a nBuLi reaction, much less sec or tert, managing to get away with only LHMDS) but I’ve always hated it when I managed to evolve gas in a sep funnel and blow days or weeks of work onto the hood surface.
And then there’s that I was injured while working with a pressure reactor about a month ago. (I’m pretty well healed by now, but I’m never going to get that tan back on my arm. It took years of New Mexico sun with no sunscreen to get that perma-tan.) Stupid gauge and thermocouple gave me false readings and I scalded myself with superheated water when it blew out of the reactor as I took the collar off. Luckily, none of the other contents were toxic or it could have been even worse. I don’t know if that counts as an “I are a moran” moment, but it sure as heck hurt.
In the electronics industry, we have this common sentence - used in the same way, with exactly the same words, in every single company I’ve worked for.
“It works better when it’s plugged in.”
I got it from a picture of a protester of some sort holding a sign that said something like: Get a brain! Morans. And another that says: Go USA.
I have no idea what he is protesting, but it always made me smile whenever I saw it.
Now whenever someone does something stupid I always think: Moran.
I found out that a 25:1 mixture for a motor mower doesn’t mean 25%.
I was aminating a dye.
Less dramatically, the week before I got a different dye on my shirt. I now have a long sleeved white t-shirt with a big purple splotch, but the splotch only shows up when I go out in the sun. 
Time for some laboratory style dry cleaning.
I’ve got a healthy respect for pressure reactors. And phosgene, but that little incident wasn’t my fault. . .
The good news–my moran moment with the pot of something did not result in a fire, or in inedible food or even in an unusuable pot.
The Bad news–I burnt stuff onto the pot on Tuesday. It took until today (Thursday) to soak, scrub, and scrape the burnt stuff off. And now that the pot is clean, it shows definite evidence that someone scraped too hard trying to get it clean.
But it is a sturdy pot which will go on to further use.
The Rykid was little, and I set a pan of water on the stove to boil his binkies and the nipple things from his bottles. Then I went into the bedroom to fold and put away laundry. Got distracted by the TV.
The smoke from the kitchen reminded me. Lemme tell ya, burnt rubber and plastic is amazing. One sniff and your lungs just basically lock up–nothing in or out. I ran out of the house to try and catch a breath. (The Rykid wasn’t there.) After a couple of gags, I took in a lungful and went back into the kitchen. The smoke was now down to about shoulder level from the ceiling. I grabbed a wash cloth to lift the pan from the stove, and when I moved it away from the stove it flashed into flame. That caused me to throw the pan where it splashed on the floor and up against the wall.
Nice.
Back outside for a breath, then back into the kitchen to smother the plastic fire.
I had to put fans in the windows and the doorway to exhaust the smoke/fumes. The house wasn’t habitable for a couple of days.
Nothing worse than burnt binkies and scorched nipples.
I hate when that happens!
Well, I’m sure I’ve had non-fire related moran moments since this, but the thread is prompting me to remember the fire related one: Recently, I tried to reheat something in the oven on one of those pizza pans with the little holes for extra crisping. The object of heating was greasy, and dripped, starting a fire. I opened the oven door, looked at the flames, and blanked.
I knew you shouldn’t use water on a grease fire. I thought maybe you were supposed to use flour, but then I remembered flour explodes under some conditions and got confused. So I ran and googled it. Yeah. That definitely made me feel S-M-R-T smart. At least I wasn’t googling what to do if hemorrhaging or anything quite that big of an emergency. Google gave me no good answer but call 911 (but the fire was really contained, and small, so I didn’t want to.) I ran back into the kitchen and the fire had run out of fuel and extinguished itself.
When my husband came home I told him I didn’t know what to use on a grease fire. He gave me a “are you a giant moron?” look and said, “The fire extinguisher.”
Which was on the shelf by the back door, which I have been walking past every day when I leave and enter the house, which I had just never noticed.
:smack:
The more you know…
I have two fire extinquishers in the house. I have never had to use them. I wonder if the time comes, whether or not I will remember where they are.
(I think one is in the garage, and the other I know is currently in the master bedroom. How it got there or why it is there is beyond me, but that is where it is.)
I once went through the car wash with both rear windows open ::smack::
Keep in mind that some kinds of fire extinguisher, when used on your stove, are a BITCH AND A HALF to clean up. My kitchen fire extinguisher is the kind that’s just for the kind of fires you get in kitchens, and I have an ABC one in the hall.
It’s making me feel much better to know there’s so many other people here who are less careful than they should be when quenching potentially violent reactions.
I’d rather clean up after a messy fire extinguisher than after a messy house fire. PSA If you’ve got a home fire extinguisher (and if not, why not?), make sure you know how to use it. You may thank yourself if you’re not standing there reading directions before a flaming stove.
Due to the nature of our work (see above regarding violent reactions) we are required to practice using extinguishers every year. It’s fun!
Tell me about it 
I have:
AT&T phone service which is needed for my satellite dish, right?
A “dedicated” phone line?
Also, I have DSL through AT&T
I cannot do the Vonage, right?
I really would like to have a cheaper phone bill, but I think I’m right in thinking that AT&T is the controlling hub in all of that?
If I’m wrong, then that would wonderful
Q
These are awesome! Last week I went to call my mom on her work phone. I don’t know that number by heart, so I looked up “Nancy” in my Outlook contacts and called her. She sounded all weird and I was asking her why her voice sounded weird, and was talking to her all shithead daughter like. Turns out, I called this client named Nancy who is the CEO of a big hospital system in Louisiana who is one of our clients. That sucked. At least she laughed it off and thought I was her daughter, and was confused as well. Her 12 year old daughter. No more drinking during the work week for me for awhile!
It’s just one man’s opinion, but I say Idlewild wins the thread. The image of you Googling “fire” while an actual fire rages in another room puts this one over the top.