Burn, baby, burn

I had an extremely brief career as a stand-up comic. It lasted less than five minutes. I did one set and immediately retired. If I had stuck with it, I could have used last night’s events as fodder.

I went to the gym yesterday afternoon. I followed that up by going to the grocery store. Alison had written a list of grocery items. As usual, she put items on the list that I had never before purchased, and in some cases had never seen (stuffed clams?). Going to the grocery store after working out is the worst. You stink and while your mind thinks that it would be a good idea to eat everything, your body is still saying “no, thanks”. While at the store I thought that this would be a good night for a fire log.

We have a fireplace in our condo. We do not use it often. When we do, we go with the fire log. Your average fire log is probably five percent wood and 95 percent unknown chemicals that will eventually cause one of us to grow a third arm. They are wrapped in paper that you can burn to get the fire started. A week ago I purchased a six-pack of a generic brand, thinking that we’d easily burn through them before we moved since it’s been freaking cold in Atlanta for more than two weeks.
When I got home, Alison had started the fire. She complained that the log wasn’t burning. She was correct. Most of the paper was gone and the charred outer part of the log would not stay on fire, save a small portion of the left side. I had a brilliant idea. Add a second log to the mix.

That log wouldn’t catch. I poked it with the handy fireplace poker, tried to light it again and nothing was working. My last-ditch effort was to get a piece of cardboard from the fire log box and ignite that. Success!

Perhaps there was too much success. The double fire logs caused a heat wave that made the surrounding furniture so hot that we moved it back. Despite the flue being open, there was a little smoke. And we had a lovely plastic smell, not the great wood smell you usually get from a fire. I was on the computer but Alison was so worried that I had to watch, poke, and taunt the fire until it gradually burned down.
An hour after the fire was finished, I closed the flue and fireplace. Alison told me that there was smoke, so I re-opened it. In the morning I closed it and we were fine, other than a lot of fire loggy ashes.

Alison actually ridiculed me on Facebook (although not by name, as she claims in her best lawyer-esque tone) for almost burning the house down. I get it.

This morning, as I was gathering my things, I told her that I was going to throw away the rest of the fire logs. Obviously their usefulness had expired. We’re moving to a new house in a week and it’s actually starting to feel like an Atlanta winter outside. Her response, which would be the punch line to my imaginary comedy routine, was “you’re not going to throw them away, are you?”