Some Funny Stories

A few stories for a laugh... true stories, might I add...

My office is in the most recently built elementary school complete with motion-sensor lights to save electricity. As a result, I have been in a room on more than one occasion when the lights go off because it doesn't know you are still in the room. No big deal, wave your arms to let the sensor know you're still there, and continue working.

Today I was at a meeting at another elementary school. The lights went off, so I waved my arms above my head. The lights came back on, and I looked at the wall to see an old-fashioned, non-motion-detector light switch. I also see every person in the meeting staring at me with weird looks on their faces. I say, "Oh, the lights aren't motion-detectors" and my colleagues say "No, that was a power surge. The whole building lost power for a moment. Why were you waving your arms?" It was a great moment.

Another story from the week was that my roommate, Maggie decided to make popcorn using hot oil on Sunday afternoon. Chris and I were watching a movie upstairs and the doorbell in the movie rang. I asked, "Was that us or the movie?" and he responded "The movie." Then the smoke detector started wailing, and I asked "Was that us or the movie? THAT'S US!"

At first I just opened the bedroom window and started fanning the smoke detector, like I've been known to do when I'm cooking something on a griddle or in a pan that has a little more sizzle than I anticipated. It was not until I looked downstairs toward the kitchen that I realized, this is not light smoke of something slightly overcooked, this is billowing smoke of burning oil and we had started coughing like crazy. I opened the window in Maggie's room to get some cross-ventilation and Chris and I headed downstairs and out the front door where we saw a small pan sitting on our cement steps.

Luckily it was a nice day and we were able to air out the house in a matter of 15 or 20 minutes. Maggie didn't realize that the pan was on, so she accidentally left oil in a pan on the stove unattended and (THANKFULLY) when she moseyed downstairs, she noticed the smoke and was on her way to remove the pan from the burner when the lid fell off of the pan, and hot oil + oxygen... all the oil in the pan burst into flames. She quickly removed the burning pan from the stove, took it outside and then squelched it with the lid... fire out! Smoke remained!

The entire event was much safer and funnier than it could have been if that pan had burned unattended for any length of time.

We have a new roommate (Jenny) who wandered up from the basement, where she was taking a Sunday afternoon nap and walked with tired-eyes to the balcony. As we were debriefing as a house as to how we did during our impromptu fire drill, I commented that I was surprised Jenny didn't just walk out her downstairs door out onto the ground floor. Instead she came upstairs so she could walk outside onto the balcony. She started laughing hysterically -- she hadn't even thought about taking the nearest exit (her downstairs door), she just wanted to know where the batteries were to get her smoke detector to stop squawking. In her sound sleep of a Sunday afternoon nap, the only explanation she had for the smoke detector waking her up was that it must be out of batteries...

... Okay, so as I was typing these stories to a friend via email earlier today, the light in my office went off, because I guess it thought I was no longer here... and yes, I waved my arms above my head, and yes, the light came back on. I'm not crazy.

Any funny stories in your life lately?