"You Can't See It, It's Electric!"
The weekend, while excellent on the whole, very much did not go as planned. As a result of this, I ended up not eating dinner Sunday night. Which meant not cooking dinner Sunday night. Which meant, since I needed left-overs for later in the week, that I was cooking hot dish Monday morning before driving up to Phoenix for a 4th of July party.
Or trying to cook. I put the water on the stove and pushed the button (our stove is so old the controls for the range are push-buttons on a panel on the wall, not knobs on the stove itself) to set the element heating. I walked away and came back ten minutes later to see if I had boiling water, yet. I picked up the metal lid of the metal pot and had a sudden intense moment of "something's not right here."
It took me ten or fifteen seconds to figure out what was wrong, because it didn't exactly hurt. My arms felt funny, and I realized they were twitching. Now again, our stove is old, and only about half the rings in each element actually heat. You'd think I'd have clued in faster, but maybe the electricity was making my brain run a little slow. That's right, I had live current running through my body. There's a metal strip on the side of the stove, and I just happened to have my hand on it, completing the circuit.
Needless to say, I dropped the pot lid. Kendra and I tested, cautiously, several times, and determined that a) it's only the one burner, b) it probably gave up the ghost when I was boiling eggs the night before, and c) Kendra is a mutant on her mother's side of the family, because she couldn't feel anything.
Cooking continued on another burner, and I called our apartment manager. I apologized for disturbing him on the holiday, but thought he'd really rather know than not know. I was right, and they plan to have someone out to look at the stove today. (We like this apartment manager. More has gotten fixed in the couple weeks since he took over than in the six or seven months prior to that).
I have now officially been electrocuted. Disturbing, but it doesn't seem to have done any lasting harm. Funny thing is, I mentioned this to some of my co-workers today, and probably a third of them had similar stories to tell about some large appliance gone awry or a brush with a low-level electric fence.
Fortunately, as like one of my physics teachers used to say: It's not the volts that kill you; it's the amps.
Or trying to cook. I put the water on the stove and pushed the button (our stove is so old the controls for the range are push-buttons on a panel on the wall, not knobs on the stove itself) to set the element heating. I walked away and came back ten minutes later to see if I had boiling water, yet. I picked up the metal lid of the metal pot and had a sudden intense moment of "something's not right here."
It took me ten or fifteen seconds to figure out what was wrong, because it didn't exactly hurt. My arms felt funny, and I realized they were twitching. Now again, our stove is old, and only about half the rings in each element actually heat. You'd think I'd have clued in faster, but maybe the electricity was making my brain run a little slow. That's right, I had live current running through my body. There's a metal strip on the side of the stove, and I just happened to have my hand on it, completing the circuit.
Needless to say, I dropped the pot lid. Kendra and I tested, cautiously, several times, and determined that a) it's only the one burner, b) it probably gave up the ghost when I was boiling eggs the night before, and c) Kendra is a mutant on her mother's side of the family, because she couldn't feel anything.
Cooking continued on another burner, and I called our apartment manager. I apologized for disturbing him on the holiday, but thought he'd really rather know than not know. I was right, and they plan to have someone out to look at the stove today. (We like this apartment manager. More has gotten fixed in the couple weeks since he took over than in the six or seven months prior to that).
I have now officially been electrocuted. Disturbing, but it doesn't seem to have done any lasting harm. Funny thing is, I mentioned this to some of my co-workers today, and probably a third of them had similar stories to tell about some large appliance gone awry or a brush with a low-level electric fence.
Fortunately, as like one of my physics teachers used to say: It's not the volts that kill you; it's the amps.
posted by Journey | 12:24 PM
1 Comments:
Did that when I was... oh about 13 and thought I could fix the lawn mower at the church that kept putzing out on me.
I did a fine job of changing the spark plugs... one little connection wiggled loose and I put it in... after picking my shocked ass off the sidewalk, I turned off the lawnmower and fixed the connection.
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