It’s 12:15 AM. I’m hungry. I’m hungry because I’ve been working on DragonCon stuff for hours, and I’ve forgotten to eat. So I go to toss together some basic subsistence food (pasta, canned sauce, mystery meat from the freezer, and frozen vegetables). Fine. Here’s the problem, though. Last time I cooked, I used some oil. If you cook with oil, some of the oil gets on stuff, like your other stove burners. Normally you don’t give a damn. You can try to clean it off, but no amount of scrubbing will keep the burners from smoking, at least a little bit, when you turn them on. Normally, again, you don’t give a damn. But the smoke detectors in my apartment are so hyper-sensitive that making toast is enough to set them off.

Not burning toast. Making toast. And my toaster’s clean, don’t ask.

So now what I’m doing is, with all the windows open, and with every fan I can find blowing toward them, gently throttling each burner, one at a time, for brief intervals, and hoping that the slight tendrils of smoke generated aren’t enough to start the screeching wail of the alarms. We’re not talking a kitchen full of smoke, here. We’re talking wisps. WISPS! I know it’s an old building and all, but jeez. If the alarms don’t clear in a minute or so, the whole BUILDING’S alarm goes off, the fire department comes out, everybody evacuates. It’s happened five or six times since I’ve been here. Not caused by me, thank goodness.

So I wait, daring the alarms to go off.

And I’m really really hungry, dammit!