Goodness Gracious

Interestingly enough, my horoscope yesterday said that I should not change my routine in any way, shape, or form. (Normally, I don't get too into this kind of stuff, but yesterday's was so adamant, I was rather intrigued.) It read that I shouldn't change the way I drive home from work, propose new ideas to my boss, attempt even talking to strangers, etc. Truth be told, even though I was intrigued, it was also kind of nice because "keeping to my usual routine" also means avoiding the gym, indulging in too much celebrity gossip, and eating frosted strawberry pop tarts right before bed. I love life. Anyways, last night, I was sitting on my couch, watching TNT and doing sudoku puzzles on my computer (after all, it was all pre-destined by the stars) when my smoke detector started to go off. I got up, but, having mostly lived in older apartments and homes, I'm entirely accustomed to smoke detectors that go off when a Lean Cuisine gets too warm in the microwave or water boils. So, you can imagine my surprise when I went to grab a broom from the kitchen (to hit the smoke alarm and keep it from beeping in that oh-so-grating fashion) and discovered a small fire on my stove. Being the highly intelligent person that I am, it seems that instead of turning down the heat on my pot of pasta, I turned on the heat for a different burner. And, since the lid to the pot was sitting on that burner, flames ensued. (It appears that the downside of doing all your shopping at the Dollar General is that not all of your purchases are "high quality" or "flame retardant.") Luckily, a lot of my dishes were on the sink (again, fate didn't want me to put anything away or clean), and I grabbed a bowl and doused the fire in water. My kitchen is messier than before (which really shouldn't be possible), but at least the crisis was averted. I have two little lessons to offer from my evening's adventure: 1) Astrology is important. Is cooking part of my normal routine? Certainly not. If I'd driven through Krystal on the way home, none of this would have happened. 2) Be careful what you wish for. Sometimes an event to "break up the mind-numbing monotony of the evening" is a fire, and that's not good. And, as important as these morals are, perhaps the most important info to take from yesterday is that I will be spending today's lunch hour at Home Depot buying a fire extinguisher.