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May 18, 2005
The Decreasing Number of Appliances
Yesterday I decided I would use one of the pizza shells in the freezer to make, (you guessed it), a pizza. I turned on the oven to give the shell a quick defrost then turned it off as I prepped the veggies, cheese and meat. As the pizza was starting to look like something I would want to cook I went back to the stove and turned the temperature knob.
No light came on; no heat was being produced...
Alas, the oven was broken. I quickly gave thought to my alternatives, with no one home downstairs I could:
1) try and cook the pizza with the residual heat from the initial heating.
2) use the toaster oven to cook parts of the pizza
3) run over to a friends with a half cooked pizza
4) give up and order take out pizza
Well, the decision was easy: my toaster oven is broken, I don't like sharing, (I would feel obligated to if I used someone else's oven), and I didn't want to spend money on something I already had. I would throw the pizza in the oven.
After watching the pizza for 15 minutes some of the cheese tried to melt, and some of the veggies got warm, but all and all the pizza did not cook. I ate 1/4 of it raw and threw the rest of it in the fridge. For those who are concerned I took parts of the pizza to work today and used their toaster oven to cook it.
So, now I had to deal with the oven. I phoned the landlord and left a message. Today he showed up to fix the appliance. I am told it is the timers on the stove and this has happened before. I hadn't touched the timers, nor had I experienced a problem in the one year I lived here, so I just smiled and nodded.
After watching the landlord fiddle with the three timer dials for 10-minutes I went into the study. I then listened to him swear while fiddling with the dials for the remainder of the hour. When I went back into the kitchen I noticed the power in the microwave was now gone. I guess he has given up for the evening because he removed half the fuses from the stove, said something about Google-ing the stove and walked downstairs leaving me with a broken oven, a few less elements on the stovetop and a powerless microwave.
I am expecting my coffee machine and 2-slot toaster to call it quits tomorrow morning.
Posted by jmclean at 09:36 PM | Comments (1)
May 12, 2005
The Whirlwind Trip
We went, we saw, we returned.
2 weeks have passed and I can now claim to have stepped on Europe's soil. I can also lay claim to seeing Paris, Venice, Rome, Cinque Terre, Orvieto, and some of their sites. To see a pretty good overview in pictures click on one of the photos displayed under the 'Lastest Photos' on the side bar. This will link you to my Flickr photo account.
In similar fashion as David Letterman I have decided to break the trip into my
Top Ten List of European Moments:
-hiking up to the hill town San Bernidino, (above the Cinque Terre), only to find locals, a handful of tourists, a great view, and the best cafe in the area
-eating the rich delicious french food
-watching Betty inadvertantly nailing people with her rolling suitcase as we wandered aimlessly through the Paris metro, the bussling streets of Nice and the Rome train station
-the morning smell of the patisseries and boulangeries as the workers pulled the pastries and breads from their ovens
-sitting on a balcony in Orvieto with my Dad, drinking a bottle of local red wine while snacking on some pizza, a bagette and some cheese
-watching Dad and Dal try pull Betty out of the ticket gate in the Metro station, (the gate shut on her in such a way that she could not go forward or backward-she was stuck)
-experiencing our language barrier, namely the restaurant in Orvieto where the server figured speaking french instead of italian would be easier, this lead to Dalvanir speaking portuguese, Dad speaking broken English, myself speaking very poor french and Betty miming out what she wanted to order, (the whole restaurant seemed to be watching)
-being woken up by Dal at 7:00 our first night in Paris, then having Dad come tell us to go back to sleep as it was only 1:30, he had read the watch upside down
-swiss chocolate
-having a the conductor from the Italian Train threaten to arrest the lot of us after we failed to mark the date on our Euro RailPass, he went on to take our passports and tickets as insurance and held us hostage on the train for the next 6 stops
Posted by jmclean at 02:48 PM | Comments (1)