Snow!
It's Snowing
We woke up this morning to about an inch of snow on the ground and in trees, and it's snowing again! I really like snow. Liv thinks it's pretty cool, too. We have a week's worth of groceries and don't have to be anywhere until Friday, so I hope we get lots and lots of snow!
Cinema
I wrote about the movie we saw last Friday night ("Pan's Labyrinth"), but I didn't write about the cinema experience. It was very similar to the US cinema experience, except that we chose our seats when we purchased our tickets. It was weird to book seats to see a movie, but it will be nice to have assigned seats in advance for popular movies. Nice and orderly, that seems to be the British way.
Microwave
On the evening of October 14, 2006, we had a small fire in the kitchen due to faulty microwave wiring.
It was a Saturday and we'd been out of the house all day visiting Bodium Castle. When we got home, the electricity was off. I thought something must have gone wrong in transferring the electric bill into our name, so I was trying to call the electric company. (To do so, I had to stand in front of our house to get a cell phone signal.) Chas, being smarter than me, thought to check the fuse box. Sure enough, the main fuse was flipped, so he turned on the power.
The power stayed on for about a minute and went back out. Hmmm, we thought, what's wrong? So Chas flipped the switch again. This time, I was standing in the kitchen and I saw flickering behind the microwave. I yelled to Chas to cut the power, and the fire went out. To be safe, we called 9-9-9 (the UK's 9-1-1) and the Fire Brigade arrived shortly. They removed the microwave from the house and used a TIC (thermal imaging camera) to make sure the wall was cool, which it was.
If the fuses hadn't worked while we were out of the house earlier, the house would have burned to the ground. Thank goodness for fuses!
Why am I just writing about this now? Well, I meant to write about it a long time ago, but I kept forgetting. But I'm writing about it because I'm thinking about how we still don't have a new microwave! We've been without a microwave for 3 months. We're renting, so we have to wait for the owners to replace the microwave. Apparently, they ran into all kinds of difficulty replacing the microwave. First of all, the microwave was a special order to fit in a custom-made cabinet. Secondly, the microwave costs an outrageous amount of money (around 700 pounds!), so the owners filed an insurance claim, which took forever to process. Supposedly, we should have a new microwave in two weeks.
It's been inconvenient not to have a microwave to reheat leftovers, but we've gotten used to not having one. Frankly, we've probably eaten better not having one, because without the microwave, we eat lots of fresh vegetables and fruits. Hopefully, our good habits will remain even after (or, if ever) we get a new microwave.
We woke up this morning to about an inch of snow on the ground and in trees, and it's snowing again! I really like snow. Liv thinks it's pretty cool, too. We have a week's worth of groceries and don't have to be anywhere until Friday, so I hope we get lots and lots of snow!
Cinema
I wrote about the movie we saw last Friday night ("Pan's Labyrinth"), but I didn't write about the cinema experience. It was very similar to the US cinema experience, except that we chose our seats when we purchased our tickets. It was weird to book seats to see a movie, but it will be nice to have assigned seats in advance for popular movies. Nice and orderly, that seems to be the British way.
Microwave
On the evening of October 14, 2006, we had a small fire in the kitchen due to faulty microwave wiring.
It was a Saturday and we'd been out of the house all day visiting Bodium Castle. When we got home, the electricity was off. I thought something must have gone wrong in transferring the electric bill into our name, so I was trying to call the electric company. (To do so, I had to stand in front of our house to get a cell phone signal.) Chas, being smarter than me, thought to check the fuse box. Sure enough, the main fuse was flipped, so he turned on the power.
The power stayed on for about a minute and went back out. Hmmm, we thought, what's wrong? So Chas flipped the switch again. This time, I was standing in the kitchen and I saw flickering behind the microwave. I yelled to Chas to cut the power, and the fire went out. To be safe, we called 9-9-9 (the UK's 9-1-1) and the Fire Brigade arrived shortly. They removed the microwave from the house and used a TIC (thermal imaging camera) to make sure the wall was cool, which it was.
If the fuses hadn't worked while we were out of the house earlier, the house would have burned to the ground. Thank goodness for fuses!
Why am I just writing about this now? Well, I meant to write about it a long time ago, but I kept forgetting. But I'm writing about it because I'm thinking about how we still don't have a new microwave! We've been without a microwave for 3 months. We're renting, so we have to wait for the owners to replace the microwave. Apparently, they ran into all kinds of difficulty replacing the microwave. First of all, the microwave was a special order to fit in a custom-made cabinet. Secondly, the microwave costs an outrageous amount of money (around 700 pounds!), so the owners filed an insurance claim, which took forever to process. Supposedly, we should have a new microwave in two weeks.
It's been inconvenient not to have a microwave to reheat leftovers, but we've gotten used to not having one. Frankly, we've probably eaten better not having one, because without the microwave, we eat lots of fresh vegetables and fruits. Hopefully, our good habits will remain even after (or, if ever) we get a new microwave.