From: gherbert@crl3.crl.com (George Herbert)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: Agg
Date: 1 Dec 1999 18:39:59 -0800
Organization: Dis-
Lines: 114
Message-ID: <824m5v$beb@crl3.crl.com>


The cats were pacing expectantly.
The package of brown and serve puffins [1]
was going nicely in the oven, as Lee
walked in and glared at me.

"What?"

"Fire, you dip."

I ducked and drew, but it wasn't that,
the thermostat had gone south again and
my metaphorical geese were cooked. [2]
The cat sniffed, scratched me,
and bounded away for better
hunting in the bedroom.

"So why on earth are you carrying pistols
in the Kitchen?"

"What pistols," I said, trying to spray fire
retardant foam on the oven with my left hand
and re-holster with my right.

"What's in your hand?"

I brought my hand back up, empty.

"And your belt?"

The smoke was dying down.  "There's only one there."

"I saw two."

"That was an optical illusion due heat reflecting off the
fire in the stove.  Could you stop the smoke alarm while
I vent the room?"

Lee glared at me.  Lee is 4'11".

"How about I stop the smoke alarm and you vent the kitchen," I re-tried.

"Smart boy."

It wasn't much of a stretch to pull the battery from the alarm.
When I got back, she was busily setting a fan up in the window.

"That should do most excellently," I congratulated her,
"Now for the Gravy."

"What gravy?"

"The brown stuff in the plastic container in the fridge."

"That was sealing wax."

"Where'd I drop the fire extinguisher?," I asked as the
stove now erupted, the pan of sealing wax lighting off to 
top off the meal's apocalypse.

Lee expertly dropped a lid on the pan and turned the stove off.
Various exchanges regarding our relative sensibilities, state of
conciousness, parentage, and theoretical discussions of the
possibility of having regressed to tree-dwelling mechanical
skill levels followed as we cleaned up the mess.

Finally, we were sitting there a bit sooty, tired, cranky,
and hungry.  One of the cats ran by with the other cat in close
pursuit, then there was a resounding crash as several hundred
rocket engine injector nozzles were knocked off the card table
in the living room.  Several hundred hand-drilled, hand sorted,
space qualified, visually identical thrust chamber injector nozzles
in two seperate orifice sizes, which if mixed would take twenty to
thirty seconds work per item to properly resort.

We walked out to survey the damage.  They'd fallen into
a bunch of equally precisely sorted high-quality beads
Lee uses in her jewelry work.  Which, being lighter than
rocket engine injector nozzle assemblies, had sprayed all
over the room.  I was only beginning to realize how far
they'd spread out when my footing gave way due to having
stepped on several of them and I fell backwards through
a stack of CDs, fortunately breaking my fall with a
cardboard box full of china.

The china not having fractured, I was regaining my feet
when the text pager went off informing me that the website
was down again because someone opened the machine room
window and let the rain in, and asked if I had a lot of
towels at home, spare parts lying around for an E10000,
and some dry Cat-5 patch cables.


				-george
					As I was contemplating
					what to do next, I rolled
					over and Lee started mumbling
					in my ear something about tigers
					which I was pretty sure meant
					that she was dreaming too,
					until the cat which had
					jumped up on her stomach
					decided to try mine,
					woke me up with a start,
					and then the pager *did* go off.

					[1,2] I would like to note that yes,
					I am not exaggerating, I really do
					pun this badly in my sleep, and Lee
					absolutely hates it when I am doing
					so and talking in my sleep, because
					she usually can't make me shut up
					except by waking me up entirely.