Where There's Smoke, There's Annika

I have several talents which I like to keep under wraps. One of these is my talent for burning things. You can see why I would keep this a secret! I recall (making a long story short) how Kristin and I managed to get to a hotel in New York for Tiff's wedding late/early enough to make a bag of popcorn and set off the alarms and wake up the poor bridal party in the next room... a talent, I tell you. This time, however, I had no accomplices.

Friday night is my night to not go out, but to stay in and watch bad TV that I really like and relax. I got myself some popcorn at the store, anticipating my need for salty, crunchy things. I, again, don't have a microwave, so I had to get the old school "manual" popcorn. Not really a big deal, and nice because that way it has no salt or butter which is way more healthy. I made my popcorn but decided to screw the healthy part. I decided to toss some butter into the pan that I had just used to make popcorn thinking that the heat would melt that butter lickety split. Well, what actually happened was that the butter immediately turned black and smoke started pouring out of the pan. I freaked out, naturally and removed the pan from the stove which was unhelpful considering the stove wasn't even on anymore. I threw the windows open (yes, in the middle of winter) and prayed that the fire alarm wouldn't -- BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!

Now I was worried that the whole fire department would come down to student central and see me in fuzzy slippers and pajamas at 8 on a Friday night. I frantically started waving a towel by the smoke detector, but I have really high ceilings, so I jumped on a chair and promptly fell off. I was even more worried that the fire crew would see me with a stupid broken leg and a towel, but I managed to hobble back up and continue flapping. I finally figured out that there was a reset button (in the other room, of course) for the alarm and things calmed down. Slightly disturbing additional fact? Neither time, in NY or NZ, did the fire department actually come. What if I was burning more than my popcorn?

Moral of the story? Don't put butter on your popcorn.