We went to Bray & Scarf! And ordered a new stove! Anna new dishwasher! They will show up on Wednesday!

> facepalm <

I am so easily amused.

We also went to Jaleo, and ate too much tapas and paella, and desserts that turned out to be gi-normous.

And then I went home and spent an hour messing about with digital photos. The effort to process the Scandanavia trip pix brought me face to face with the fact that I haven't uploaded anything to Flickr since Hanukkah except for the Katsucon pictures, even though I took pix at half a dozen family get-togethers. Given that the recording of family events was one of the main justifications for my spiffy big camera, this fill me with much guilt.

I don't believe in rice cookers. I know how to make rice, dammit. But I scorch it maybe 4 to 6 times per year, so the Mr. bought me a rice cooker to prevent this calamity. To put this statistic in perspective, you should note that I make rice an average of twice a week ... . He was tactful enough, at least, not to buy it as a Mother's Day or birthday gift - but enough of a guy to proudly point out that he hadn't bought it for that sort of occasion.

But I digress.

Anyway, tonight, because our stove is dead (it's a sordid tale involving mice, and a socket wrench, and old wiring ... don't ask), I was forced to use the rice cooker.

I managed to scorch the rice.

I think the problem was that I left it on "warm" too long - the manual didn't give any estimates for how long it would take the rice to cook, so I ended up having to let it sit while the meat finished cooking. But let me tell you, I felt a really bizarre sort of triumph in pointing out to the Mr. that rice cookers do not prevent scorched rice ... .

So we heard the water go on again in the Young Lady's bathroom, 10 minutes after she was finished with her shower. And then she shouted that she couldn't turn it off.

It had been dripping, and she turned the faucet handle so many times that it unscrewed from inside the "wet wall," and all the water that normally would have come out the shower was running down inside the walls, from two stories up.

We finally got it temporarily straightened out, after turning off the house master valve for a while so the Mr. could play plumber. But we need to have a real plumber come in, and soon ... .