Today I almost blew up the lower portion of my parent's house. Luckily they are 1,719 miles away and will NEVER find out. Unfortunately this story has nothing to do with experiments from US Army's magnum opus: the TM 31-210 Improvised Munition Handbook. The scare was caused by something a little less exciting and normally reserved for the AARP crowd.
I was trying to make a pot of tea.
Here's a breakdown of how this shit didn't-quite-but-almost-did go down:
I lit the surface burner and walked off to take care of some project immediately more important than tea production. Russ Martin was on on my iPod and my eyes were occupied with the computer screen so I am guessing that with these two senses tied up, I failed to notice anything odd. Approximately 15 minutes after IKC (initial kettle contact), I heard a noise that exceeded the decibels produced by Mr. Martin and I withdrew my left headphone from my left ear. It was Brian asking what that smell was. Immediately, I too, noticed an overbearing natural gas odor. At about this time, my dizziness was also becoming apparent to me. I pushed the chair out from under me and ran to the stove to see a beautiful baby blue tea kettle that WAS NOT HOT. It contained NO BOILING WATER. The gas, however, was still spewing out. It was promptly turned off and I ran upstairs to find my brother and his life partner brushing their teeth. I advised them to not light any candles. The upstairs was filled with gas as well, so I turned on the fans and we evacuated to Chic-fil-A.
Apparently, our stove does not have the "auto reignition" feature.
After that Andrew fell asleep in the warm relaxing hot tub while having a Mikes hard lemonade. Later he got dressed in his favorite Orange Old Navy jump suit outfit and drove down to his local Starbucks to have a Skinny Caramel Macchiato with a small blueberry scone to tide him over until later on that night.
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