From: wmute (Wintermute)
Subject: Re: Great housekeeping (fwd)
To: moike@netcom.com (-Mike Hardcore-)
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 1995 13:51:25 -0700 (PDT)
In-Reply-To: <199508041553.IAA29537@netcom22.netcom.com> from "-Mike Hardcore-" at Aug 4, 95 08:53:23 am
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><fwds burned>

Heheeee... =)

>It burned great... right down to that full can of deodorant that was in 
>there with it all.

  Hah... No way... the EXACT same thing happened to me when I lived with 
Tracee.  She had really severe asthma.  Before going to bed she had this
machine that she loaded with these little capsules of some sorta steroid 
that was vaporized into a steam which she would inhale to allow her to 
sleep without suffocating.  When she was away at work in the afternoons 
I would find all the newspapers, junk-mail, milk-cartons or anything 
else flammable and burn them in the fireplace.  Then she'd come home and 
have trouble breathing and I'd pretend like I had no idea what was 
irritating.  I'd say I thought the neighbor had been burning trash and 
that maybe if we closed all the windows, she wouldn't be able to smell 
the smoke.  <giggle>  Damn, I'm a prick.  
  This was so much fun that I got into the habit of separating the trash 
into flammable and non-flammable, to make it that much easier.  The trash 
under the kitchen sink had bottles, cans, plastic, etc in it and I always 
threw papers into the trash in the bathroom.  One day my mother had been 
over and seen what a mess the bathroom was.  I had all sorts of crap 
piled up on the bathroom counter, including a nearly full spray bottle of 
contact lens solution I never used because the button had broken off.  
She threw it into my bin full of flammable trash.  I didn't know this 
until Tracee left for work the next day and I ran to get the fire 
started.  It was pretty spectacular.  When the bottle reached critical 
mass, I was sitting right by the fireplace reading.  I fell out of my 
chair, threw my book, and nearly soiled my boxers.  The contact lens 
solution had apparently gotten above the boiling point (at 1 atmosphere) 
before the can ruptured.  As soon as the liquid hit the relatively 
low-pressure of the outside air, it vaporized.  It looked rather 
spectacular.  Some of the pieces of the can were actually on fire as they 
shot out of the fireplace in a huge cloud of steam and soot and burning 
Reader's Digests.  (Yeah aluminum burns.)  I vaccuumed and scrubbed 
everything, but for some strange reason, Tracee's asthma acted up even 
worse than usual that evening.  =)

>There I was, sucking up ashes with an upright vacuum.  Too bad not all 
>of them were cold.  That upright vacuum swallowed ONE LITTLE ITTY BITTY 
>HOT EMBER that was sitting there on the carpet.  It flew right up 
>inside it and sat on that big ol' pile of carpet lint way up in that bag.
>Next thing I know, the side of that vacuum is glowing red hot.
>[...]

>it looked like a good downrange trajectory... right up to the point it 
>passed through the plate glass window to the right side of the door.

<sniff sniff> That was fucking beautiful man!  What newsgroup is that from?

--
        "Meat's meat, and a man's gotta eat!"        | -Allen Wintermute-
-----------------------------------------------------| P.O. Box 4827
Try ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/wm/wmute/ascii the next | San Jose, CA 
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