I made taro fries last night and they were good. Simple to make: just cut up a taro root; toss with olive oil, garlic powder, and pepper; place on a cookie sheet; and throw in the oven at 450°F (230°C, 510 K) until crisp.

I haven't made them since I moved out of the house_of_clocks, mostly because I don't make it down to the Super 88 very often since I moved here. That probably won't change, as I cook mainly for purpleglitter now and she doesn't like the food from the Super 88 except Pocky, taro and a very few other items. We only ended up getting the taro because we went with invalid_userid to pick up food for her stay.

As I stated in an earlier post: the old house_of_clocks, which due to its dilapidated condition was sometimes called the Crackhouse of Clocks, was completely renovated and turned into a condo a couple years after we moved out. purpleglitter and I went to the open house today to check the place out. The layout of the place was virtually the only thing that was familiar. The place is astounding, wonderful. I'd love to move back in if I could afford it. Even if I could afford it, however, the housing market is poised on the verge of a giant bubble burst and now would definitely not the time to be buying.


( tour of the renovated old house of clocks )

After she got off work, purpleglitter met me at the house_of_clocks. From there we went to Walgreens and noticed a smoky smell. Then we noticed the smoky smell was coming from the smoke that was coming from the trashcan by the entrance. Someone had apparently thrown some sort of ignited tobacco product in the trashcan, which is just plain stupid as the Walgreens trashcans are equipped with a disposal unit on top of them specifically for ignited tobacco products. I stuck my hand in the can to try to put it out as purpleglitter squawked at me that I'd set my clothes on fire. Very shortly after I took my hand out the smoldering turned into sizable flames.

A couple Walgreens employees attempted to douse the flame with water, however they simply lessened its magnitude. Within a few minutes, the fire department arrived and put the fire out properly. No damage to anything but the trashcan, which is trashed.

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Upon arriving back at purpleglitter's apartment, I decided to make us pizza in the oven. The heating element of the oven fell down while the pizza was cooking and started burning the cheese. This produced much smoke but no real flame. We had to open the doors and air out the apartment. Luckily the oven suffered no real damage and the heating element can be easily reattached.

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Later in the evening, the toaster decided to completely burn our bagels. I would probably not mention the occurrence otherwise, but it seemed to top off the evening of burning.

The house_of_clocks still doesn't have heat. Nobody in the house can afford oil. So we freeze. Hopefully we'll have heat by Christmas, but I'm not counting on it. I think we may just freeze out the winter. When it gets very cold I'll start my ritual of boiling water on the stove. I'm very adept at heating a house with the oven and stove. I've done it many times when either the furnace broke or the oil ran out. It's colder than most would like it, but the pipes don't freeze. Looks like a chilly winter.

The oven repairperson just left. The oven has been broken for several weeks, but out of spite for Bebe, I hadn't called anyone until now. He said that he'd have to order a part and that he'd come back in 2 to 5 business days.

purpleglitter and I decided a few days ago to just weather the storm and leave at the end of the lease rather than go through the rather large effort of kicking Bebe out. We've been wanting to move out of this pit for quite a while and with Massachusetts rental laws Bebe could drag out the process of kicking her out to within a month of the lease running out, anyway.

This morning, shortly after I awoke, purpleglitter started complaining that something is wrong with the stove. I noticed the problem was that it had been opened but not put back together properly. So, I ask Bebe if she did anything to the stove, she answered that the oven knob wouldn't turn, so she looked inside to see what was wrong with it.

I looked at the oven nob, and it had obviously been hit very hard, possibly by accident. Also the inside of the knob had been stripped. I asked her if she knew anything about it, she admitted to trying to twist the knob too hard when it wasn't turning and stripping the inside, but she claimed to not know what, if anything, could have hit the knob.

After Bebe left to go fishing (her new hobby), purpleglitter, who'd been sitting in the room the whole time, told me that while I was gone last night, she heard Bebe in the kitchen banging the oven really hard with a frying pan, and yelling about it not working. My question is why didn't she tell me about that, before I confronted Bebe? Why be so cryptic with "something's wrong with the stove"?

So, right now the oven is unusable, and I can't ask the landlord to fix it, because it's been obviously damaged by hand. Doesn't really matter to me, as I'm almost exclusively a stove top cooker. I don't care if it matters to Bebe. Lake doesn't cook. My only worry is that Ayana (the roommate moving in this week, possibly today) will want to use it. Maybe she's a stovetop cooker like myself, and it won't be that big of a deal, but if it is, I'll have to try to figure it out.