Zap!

It's a little disconcerting to be sitting here, minding my own business, writing my managerial economics paper (this week's topic: the HP-Compaq merger from about a bazillion years ago - what did proponents think, what did antagonists think, what's going on now, etc. - I know you're jealous you don't get to research this and write a 3-5 page paper on it) and start smelling smoke.

Huh, I think, that's weird. "I smell smoke." It finally registers in my brain that I should probably check it out, and so I look around. My laptop appears to be fine (contrary to popular belief, the keyboard does not smoke even when I'm typing at my fastest, which is the fastest around, pardner). The Mac is humming away behind me. There's no other technology of mention here in the darkroom. Well, there are the printers. And a bunch of old cameras. But nothing else actually turned on and running.

Then I remember that a few moments prior, when I was writing up something about Carly Fiorina (the girl freakin' rocks, okay?), I heard a bzt sound and the fly that had been vaguely annoying me was suddenly silent. Uhhhhh...

We have a torchiere lamp in here that's about as old, if not older, than the HP-Compaq merger. It's one of those ultra-dangerous torchiere lamps that made headlines years ago for catching drapes, furniture, wallpaper, small pets...pretty much anything flammable that happened to be within a five foot radius, on fire. They were popular at the time, so the torchiere lamp companies had to make these special grates available that sit over the ultra-hot bulb and keep things from dropping onto the lamp and catching fire. Most people chucked the lamps, but not my M. Ever frugal ("It's still a perfectly fine lamp! And it's bright!" We know how he's attracted to bright objects), he affixed the grate thingy and we've used the lamp to no ill-effect since then. The bulb is a bitch to replace, though, as it's one of those where you can't touch it with human skin or you'll ruin the bulb and break out in hives or something. That alone is reason enough for me to chuck the damn thing as I hate anything that's remotely inconvenient, but M changes the bulbs and so I keep it.

Anyway, at this point, having smelled smoke and heard the bzt and the silence of the fly (which is nothing like the silence of the lambs), I put it all together in my feeble, economics-riddled brain, and look up.

There's smoke literally pouring out the top of the torchiere. Well, that doesn't look good. There are no curtains near the lamp, the cats are both accounted for, and the smoke doesn't look all that ominous, so I send an instant message to M. "Come up here NOW." I can't yell, you see, as my darkroom is right next to Sleeping Zozer's room. He types back, "Why?" Which I don't get as I've now climbed up on my chair and am trying to see what the hell is causing all the smoke. I can't see a damn thing, though, because the bulb is as bright as the sun, so I climb back down to turn the lamp off. That's when I see M's "Why?" and type back, "Hurry." Turn off the lamp, climb back up on my chair, and see roasted fly. Blech.

With that, I hear M's footsteps pounding the stairs, the door open, and then, as he gets a whiff of the smoke, a Scooby-Doo type scramble down the hall to get to me. It was cute, really. He rounds the corner, wide-eyed. "I smell smoke!"

Yeah, um, it's a fly. I roasted a fly.

I was admonished for not yelling and getting his attention that way, but I counter with the fact that there was no actual fire, but rather a nice charbroiled insect with some poofy white smoke. Turns out the grate-thingy on top of the torchiere won't keep out suicidal flies. They really should warn you about that.

So I'm sitting here typing in semi-darkness now, waiting for the lamp to cool so I can dump out the fly and turn it back on.

It's really quite sad that I suspect this will be my excitement for the night. Sigh.