Fail Blog

About a month ago, I bought a barbecue. Over the last few weeks, I've been assembling it, 15-20 minutes at a time, whenever I had a few free minutes. I finally finished it last week and decided to break it in tonight with a hamburger. And I was fairly terrified. After all, this is a large piece of metal, with gas lines and a big tank of gas, that I put together myself. In other words, a bomb, and an unstable one at that. All week, as I've been pumping myself up to take it out on its maiden cookout, the only outcome I've been able to imagine is a sudden fireball taking out my entire neighborhood. But I couldn't very well just let it sit in my garage, brand new forever. So I faced my fears. I wheeled it out to my driveway, checked all the connections, listened for any gas leaks, etc. And then, with all the courage I have within me, I turned the ignition knob and pushed the button. And...nothing happened. At all. I tried again. And again. My barbecue doesn't work. I don't know why. Probably something's not connected right. But I still had my hamburger patties sitting there, waiting to be cooked, so I put them in a pan and cooked them inside. Meantime, I meant to buy hamburger buns yesterday, but I was in a huge hurry at the grocery store and forgot all about them. So I made my own. They were baking nicely and finished just as the meat was done. I took the pan out of the oven and put it on the stove top to cool. There must have been some water on the stove top or something, because a few seconds later there was the sound of an explosion, and my hamburger buns were sitting not in a pan, but in a pile of glass. Sigh.... I cleaned it all up (note: glass takes a long time to cool off, even when it's in tiny pieces all over the kitchen), and ate my dinner (at least the meat tasted good). Then I went for a walk and now I'm going to eat a brownie and ice cream and sulk all night.