As part of my continuing advocacy of the pleasures of reading, I offer this link. It’s to a blog run by young women who read books. Young women who happen to be topless. While reading those books. In public. Again, I offer this as a further means to spreading the joy of reading.
You may recall the story of how my 10-year-old smoked up the interior of our microwave oven — and our entire house — by trying to cook microwave noodles without putting any water in. (If you missed it, here it is.) Tomorrow marks the one-month anniversary of our near-Hindenburg, and during that month, we’ve made concerted and repeated efforts to get the microwave oven to stop reeking.
My wife cleaned it out.
I cleaned it out.
Then my wife moved it outside and left the door open, trying to air it out.
Then she tried various remedies found on the internet: microwaving lemon juice, or bleach, or who-knows-what. All while the microwave oven remained outside.
During the holidays, she’s left the Chernobyl oven outside, on a table in our carport, in what she’s taken to calling “the microwave annex.” It’s there that she and our three kids and her parents, who are visiting, have had to troop with various things to cook or reheat. (Me, I’ve relearned how to use a pot and a burner.)
Yesterday, I asked our eldest, Lex, who is 21 and visiting from Hawaii, to make another attempt. “Really scrub it out — again — then look on the Internet and try those solutions, and if none of that works, I’ll give up.” Because even though a new microwave oven will cost only about $109 (or $80 in a sale at our nearby Fry’s), I just haven’t been able to bring myself to agree to buy one, because this one works. There’s nothing wrong with it. Except the brimstone-like smell of it venting.
Late last night, he texted me: “No luck with the microwave. Clean now, still smells though.” Much as that comma splice made me wince (and he’s teaching 8th grade!), I was ready to relent.
Then I stopped home for lunch today and saw the microwave oven back inside. I opened the door to reheat a turkey wing, braced for the worst, and noticed… nothing.
“Hey!” I said. “It doesn’t stink! It smells clean! What did you guys do?”
Inside the microwave oven, I found a tub of baking soda. Evidently this final trick, atop all the others, was the compound solution we’d needed. I was delighted.
I put the turkey wing in, covered it with a microwave-oven covering plate, and pressed the buttons to heat for two minutes at 50% power. Except I couldn’t read the readout. I tried it again. No readout. I heated up the turkey wing successfully, but the readout was dead. Blammo. No indication of anything. When I pointed it out, Lex said, “Oh, I guess the readout finally died. It was burning out.”
So I texted my wife to tell her to buy a new microwave oven. (I also texted, “Whatever you decide, bear in mind Crist’s Law.” Crist’s Law, for the uninformed, is this: “If you’re going to buy one, buy a good one.”)
If I believed in fate, then I would believe we were fated to get a new microwave oven now, no matter what personal action we took. But I don’t believe in fate.
Offered without further comment, but with full enthusiasm.
Yesterday, just as the Mayans predicted, the world ended.
Today is the new world.
In the new world of today, you do not have to repeat the mistakes of that old world. That’s a big part of what makes it new. It’s also what makes it good.
I’m glad we all made it, and I’m looking forward to what we can accomplish.
A couple of potential solutions:
A few years ago, I dubbed our local elementary school’s annual offering “The Talentless Show,” because clearly you didn’t need any in order to get up on stage. Now I see I have company.
I’m sorry to learn of the closing of Hunger Artists Theatre in Fullerton, California, after 16 years of producing new work and brave revivals. They produced my play “Next Time” a few years ago, and many plays by local playwrights, including scripts that came out of my workshop. I haven’t been down to Fullerton in a while (it’s 38 miles in distance from Burbank — but sometimes that translates into two hours of driving), but I liked knowing the theatre was there.
Here’s news of the announcement, and here’s a further analysis.
My 10-year-old has refused to appear in this year’s elementary school production of the holiday show.
The teacher has tried everything to get him to change his mind.
She’s asked him if he’s sure. (He’s sure.)
She’s reminded him that he knows all the words to the songs, and seems to like music, and so perhaps he’d like to be on stage singing along. (He wouldn’t.)
She pointed out to him that this was his last year of elementary school, and therefore his last year to be in this school production. (He doesn’t care.)
Last week at our parent-teacher conference, she brought it up to me and wanted to know what I thought about it.
“How many don’t want to participate?” I asked.
“Just him,” she said.
“I thought there was another boy.”
“No, he joined in,” she said.
So this other kid had caved. “Well, I’m glad to know he doesn’t give in to peer pressure.”
She looked at me. “There’s no peer pressure,” she said. I think she assumed I meant from the other kids.
“I’m not going to force him,” I said, “but I’ll ask him about it again. I know he likes to sing.”
Later, in the car, I asked him about it. Yes, he likes to sing along, but no, he wasn’t doing the show. So that was that. Part of me was proud of him, even though I knew his grandparents would be disappointed. As for my wife and me, we both thought it presented a fine excuse for missing the elementary school holiday show.
Today I came home and Dietrich proudly announced that he was involved with the holiday show.
“WHAT? I thought you didn’t want to be in it!”
“I’m not,” he said, beaming. “I’m the assistant director.”
It sounded like it had been his plan all along.
As I noted before, last Wednesday I bought a new car, a hardtop convertible. I drove it home with the top up because the weather promised rain.
On Thursday, it rained.
On Friday, it rained.
On Saturday, it rained.
(At this point, we should remember that I live in Los Angeles.)
On Sunday, it rained.
It’s now early Monday. It’s still raining.
I’ve finally started to wonder what I could’ve saved if I’d told them I didn’t need the convertible option.
James Altucher writes, very engagingly, about the first professional website he ever designed, diamondcutters.com . His client has died, but the site lives on.