Near Disaster . . . Averted

I've recently found that for me there are two things that definitely do not mix -- a microwave with its control panel labelled in Korean and watching a classic comedy film on your laptop across the room. Here's the scene, I had placed a packet of Orville Redenbacher's Gourmet Popping Corn (that I'd picked up last weekend in Daegu at the only Costco in this part of the country) in the microwave, punched a few buttons that I believed would provide sufficient time for the packet to pop, and then walked over to my laptop and searched out "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" on YouTube.

It's quite amazing how engrossed a person can get into British humor! The film clip ran only 10 minutes, but that was more than enough time for my LG microwave to consume and nearly catch on fire that bag of Orville Redenbacher's! I had thought all would be well since the buttons I pushed had set the timer for only 6 minutes, 30 seconds. In my past experiences trying to pop corn in this particular microwave, I had pushed some buttons and it had taken a total of more than 6 1/2 minutes just to partially pop the packet.

What I did not realize, however,(its a terrible thing when you can't speak or understand the language of those around you; it is even worse, though, when you cannot read that language) was that the buttons I had pushed before set the microwave to half power. What I had just pushed set the same amount of time but activated the maximum power that little LG can muster! While the bag was being microwaved, my attention was drawn deeper and deeper into Pythonesque witty banter, and my hoots and howls of laughter were evidently drowning out any beeps or bells that the microwave was emitting.

It was not until I smelled the smoke and sensed that the room was filling with a denseness that I finally ran over to fling the microwave's door open, snatch the smoking bag just before it burst into flames and throw it into the sink where I doused it with water for a good three minutes. Once I was sure the bag was thoroughly extinguished, I opened windows in both back and front of the apartment (in spite of the cool fall temp's) and placed an oscillating fan on high in the middle of the room in a futile effort to exhaust the smoke that, by this time, had saturated the apartment and was beginning to infiltrate my neighbors' units.

Thankfully, no one else was around on Saturday night except the lone hermit who inhabits my room. Everyone else had much more interesting things to do than watch Monty Python on YouTube. Needless to say, I did not eat any popcorn while watching the remainder of the film. Instead, I was thankful that I was not cleaning up a much better mess, and even more grateful that my near disaster had been graciously averted.

[For your enjoyment I've included one of the best scenes from the film. WARNING: DON'T put any popcorn in the microwave!]