From the dangers behind that thick brick wall

So you may remember that shortly before Christmas, as part of the seasonal outbreak of situation comedy, the microwave blew up. It turned out to have been introduced to the apartment by the previous tenants, not brought by my cousins from Texas, so it was sort of the landlord's responsibility to replace it. It's not that we weren't correctly appreciative and lowered our expectations accordingly when he offered the microwave that another set of tenants no longer had a use for. It was really nice of him not just to leave us to our own devices. Under those circumstances, you know you're not getting a state-of-the-art machine. I just really think we can't be blamed for not realizing in advance that when he said "spare microwave" he meant "combination microwave and by all appearances toaster oven whose user interface is mostly a rotary dial."

To give it credit, for the last three weeks I microwaved mugs of water with it daily and it never caught on fire. I did take to referring to it as the dreadnought. In addition to looking like a component of NORAD, it was the size of the freezer and required purchase of a new extension cord in order to plug in. We were never entirely certain of its capabilities. For obvious reasons, it did not come with a manual.

I spent most of today out of the house on various grocery-related errands. Toward evening, after it had started snowing and I was thinking seriously about how much easier it would be to defrost the hot dogs I had bought from Moody's Delicatessen in a microwave that I trusted not to launch nuclear missiles, I finally made contact with my mother and arranged to take from my parents' storeroom the microwave that derspatchel and I used at Leonard Street. It is now residing above the refrigerator; it needed some cleaning after having been stored for three months, but behaves in all other ways exactly like a microwave. The hot dogs were an adventure of their own, but that wasn't the appliance's fault. I knew they were the artisanal equivalent of foot-long dogs when I bought them, but I swear they got larger as they cooked.

The dreadnought has been relocated to the disused electronics corner of the apartment. gaudior is a little sorry that they never got the chance to stumble upon the combination of controls that would have caused it to time-travel. rushthatspeaks is just thankful that we no longer have to worry about it leaking radiation.