"It tastes like burning!"

[wordinista]

Okay, so you know how something will happen, and it'll annoy you, but you won't think too much about it, and then a few weeks later it happens again, and you realize that it's something that should have freaked you the hell out?

Yeah.  That was me, yesterday.

A few weeks back, I'd noticed this funky, burny type smell, and after a search of a few rooms, I discovered (or so I thought) that it was the corpse of a spider unlucky enough to kick the bucket in our ceiling dome light.  I turned off the light (haven't found need to use it since) and thought nothing more of it.

Fast forward to yesterday.  I was sitting at my desk in the office, printing out a few things for my marketing class.  As I'm sitting there, I smell a weird burny smell (though different from the burny smell a few weeks back), and I do a search around the room.  I realize it could be dust burning off a lightbulb, or dust burning off a monitor, or what have you.  But I couldn't find the source.  So, on a whim, I looked at the outlet behind my desk. Plugged in to that outlet I have one UPS that carries my computer, monitor, and printer, and another plug that... okay, I don't remember exactly what that plug runs to.  Doesn't really matter.

Top plug is partway out of the socket.

"Hmm, that's odd," I say to myself.  So I push it back in, like you do.

Enter sparks.  Blue ones.  Orange ones too, which, you know, to me?  MEANS FIRE.  Out comes the plug.  Sparks don't stop.  Out comes the OTHER plug.  Bunneh sits on her floor watching the outlet like a hawk, taking comfort in the fact that the wall isn't hot.  (The outlet's faceplate, on the other hand, was hot as hell.  But the wall itself wasn't hot.)

Insert a frantic call to landlord here.

Insert a frantic call to teh boi here.

Every damned thing in the room gets powered down and/or unplugged.  As I'm sitting on the floor again, watching the outlet to make sure nothing bursts into flames (no, really), I realize that there's another strange burny smell in the office.  A smell that, interestingly enough, I can identify.  It smells like burnt spider (or, rather, what I thought was burnt spider). 

Nice.

Needless to say, I didn't go to class last night, because when your hands are shaking and you're hyperventilating, driving doesn't seem to be high on the list of Smart Things To Do.  I have spoken with the landlord, who basically told me to call whatever electrician I wanted.  I have a number of one to call tomorrow.  Until then, I've got my own Mission Control set up in the living room.

Really, fire is one of those things that seriously freaks me out.  Some of my worst, most vivid childhood nightmares involve being trapped in a burning house/car/building. In fact, there's one that's stuck with me ever since I was four or five -- I used to have an electric blanket (b/c we lived in NH where it gets verreh cold), and I remember dreaming that the blanket caught fire while it was wrapped around me.  So, yeah.  Healthy fear of electrical fires instilled at an early age.  (I also have a crazy fear of grease fires, which is why I very seldom ever fry anything.)

Of course, since yesterday, I've been peering at all of the OTHER sockets and sniffing the air to make sure nothing smells like burnt spider.

There are a few memes out there that I want to do, and they've been stolen from various people.  Hopefully I can keep them all straight:

From smtfhw --Post a favourite poem when you see this!


"Kubla Khan," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge -- I don't know what it is about this poem I love so much, but it's just so gorgeous to the ear.  I love reading it out loud and just listening to the way the words sound.  I also love "Christabel" and "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," both by Coleridge.  But this one... this one is my favorite.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,

That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

*content sigh* Okay, now onward with meme-age:

This one I've wanted to do for a while, and both mscongeniality and darth_snuggles have done it:

Name a pairing or character (that I'm familiar with, in a fandom I'm familiar with) and I will write one line of a story for it.  However, like DS, I reserve the right to write more if inspired.  :D

Comments

And now, Lord Peter/Harriet

[w0rdinista.livejournal.com]

Lord Peter Wimsey blinked at his wife, grey eyes registering nothing but pure shock. "You aren't serious."

"Darling," his wife replied, "you are the joker in this family, not I."

"Trust you to call me a fool," he muttered. But there was no malice in his tone; there never was, when he was speaking to her. Besides, his lordship's attention was diverted elsewhere: in his arms he held a small bundle, wrapped in a white blanket. It was the fourth time he'd held such a precious bundle, and the novelty had yet to wear off. But now his silence lasted perhaps longer than even his wife had anticipated.

"Say something, Peter." Harriet paused. "Speak the speech, I pray you," she added drowsily, sinking back against the pillows with a yawn.

"Trippingly on the tongue?" he asked lightly. After a moment, he shook his head. "No, my dear one, I fear you have rendered me quite speechless."

Several minutes passed in this fashion, and when Harriet slipped into a welcome -- and well-deserved -- sleep he handed the bundle off to the nurse.

In the hall, three boys stood sentry, and when their father came out, their cherubic (and yet still somehow mischievous, though his lordship rather supposed that was his fault rather than any doing of their mother's) faces lit up with equal parts anticipation and worry.

Master Bredon, aged seven and, as the eldest, the spokesman for the troop, stepped forward. "Is everything all right, Father?"

The man in question took a seat on the nearby stairs, sinking down with a sigh. "I'm afraid, men, we are quite undone." A heavy silence followed as the three boys exchanged worried looks.

"Are we... quite doomed, Mister Scatterblood?" Bredon asked earnestly.

Lord Peter nodded gravely. "Quite, Cap'en Teach."

"Wh-what is it?" Young Roger ventured, not at all reassured by the events thus far.

"Congratulations, men. You've a sister."

And I've a daughter.

For it was one thing to have in one's life a woman around whose little finger you were happily wound -- to have two such women in one's life was quite another thing entirely.

Great Scott, I'm in it now.