Wednesday, June 30, 2010

What I Found Out Today

So, today I learned an important lesson.



When I fill a teakettle full of water, and put it on the stove, and turn on the burner, it's VERY IMPORTANT to turn on the burner underneath that kettle. Rather than, for example, the empty kettle on the next burner.



Also, when the kettle's enamel begins to melt onto the burner, sticking the two together, it can be a little tricky thinking of a good place to put the kettle without damaging a countertop, or sink, or indeed anything else. Fortunately I had a wooden dowel outside, lashed horizontally from the railing on the balcony, to hang it from while it cooled down. Though I suspect the hummingbirds would have preferred I put it somewhere else (the other end of that dowel supporting one of their sugar-water feeders).



Probably going to need a new kettle at some point. Possibly a new burner-element too. Ah well.



Fortunately this one counts as an Incident, rather than a disaster, on the Rateliff scale of things.



--John R.


1 comment:

Josh Long said...

In _The History of The Hobbit_, you note, "Given the degree to which Tolkien borrowed freely from his earlier works when writing _The Hobbit_--what I have elsewhere called his knack for autoplagiarism..." (370). By "elsewhere," do you mean elsewhere in _The History of The Hobbit_ or another work of yours? Any help would be much appreciated.