Fire!

"Something is on FIRE!" These frenzy inciting words were uttered by one of my co-workers today. At about noon my boss inadvertently tried to catch our office on fire. It was great! Recently Cathy has been on a diet kick which has been great for me because it has cut down on the amount of pie and carbs that were constantly being paraded around the office. Today she brought in a low carb mac and cheese microwave dinner for lunch. She mentioned that she had found it in the back of her freezer and it had lots of freezer burn on it but she was going to try it and see if it was still good. So she goes and puts it in the microwave and comes into my office to chat while it was “cooking.” That’s when the shouting started… “There’s something on fire!” Cathy and I looked wide-eyed at one another and then ran down to the kitchen. Cathy yells, “My lunch!” By then we could see smoke billowing out into the hallway and my co-worker Lynn trying to tame the smoke. Cathy beat me to the microwave and once it was open even more smoke filled the room. So the whole kitchen is smoky and I am doing my best to waft the smoke away from the smoke detector, flinging by body in the air and wind milling my arms about. (Ironically, we had had a building fire drill on Tuesday. We passed with flying colors. In a real fire I think we would all die.) So now Lynn has run into our boardroom to get the new fans we had just purchased for when the offices got hot. (Even with the air conditioning sometimes it gets stuffy in a high rise. We hadn't anticipated this kinda hot though.) Unfortunately, all three of them were still in the boxes and so while I’m jumping in the air Lynn is furiously dissecting the packaging to get to the standing fan. It turns out fans aren’t really an “out of the box” item. There were components to put together so Lynn just took the head of the fan, laid in on the floor and plugged it into an outlet near the kitchen. So while Lynn was battling the fan and I was jumping in the air, Cathy was standing at the microwave in the smoke filled kitchen. Her eyes were blinking vigorously trying to stand the stinging smoke and she was attempting to wipe up the charcoal mess with paper towels. So I’m shouting at her, “Cathy, get out of the kitchen! The smoke is bad for you, get out of the kitchen! Now is not the time to be cleaning the microwave!” So Lynn comes running down and starts yelling at her too. As soon as Cathy stopped cleaning the microwave, I started working on the other box of fans which ALSO required some assembling. So after we were able to blow most of the smoke out in the hallway we were able to assess the damage. There were piece of fan boxes, Styrofoam, plastic and fan parts strewn everywhere. The microwave was a mess and the mac and cheese – well, see for yourself…

We all stink too. We smell like a bonfire where the kindling was burnt microwave popcorn. I can’t believe the fire alarm didn’t go off. Apparently, my fire dance had helped. That's all we would have needed is a bunch of firefighters laughing at our blackened mac and cheese. (Ironically, their offices are in our building too!) There hadn’t been any real flames but the smoke had been pretty heavy. Later we presented the petrified lava rock (aka mac and cheese) to Cathy for lunch. Yummy!

Earlier Cathy had told me the mac and cheese had been in her freezer since the last time she was on weight watchers. Lynn and I examined the burned up packaging and found a date from 1999. Um, yeah! I would not advise anyone to attempt to eat anything that is almost a decade old! Besides not tasting good it’s a fire hazard!