'Wave, goodbye

My microwave, the one I've had since the day I left home, is gone. Well that's not entirely true. It's still sitting on the counter, but like a girlfriend you've insulted one too many times, it's no longer putting out.

It happened Monday before last. I was six minutes into an eight-to-ten minute baked potato when I stopped it for a routine check. When I tried to start it back up, there was nothing. I unplugged it and plugged it back in, you know because sometimes that works with the computer and computers and microwaves are so similar... still nothing. It was over.

What can one say about a countertop appliance? I knew her ding, the layout of her face, and what made her go around. Well, not mechanically speaking, but I knew which buttons to push.

With a capacity of 0.8 cubic feet, rounding up, she was 700 watts of relatively-safe radiation heating power. You can't get kind of power anymore! Seriously, do they still make them with that low of wattage?

And let me say this, if there were a Guinness Book Of World Records record for such a thing -- and if I had kept an accurate count -- I have no doubt we would have set a record for most frozen burritos made in a single non-commercial microwave oven that would never have been broken.

Perhaps most tragically, she had just recently undergone her 10-year cleaning. Granted, a few years late.

There is much I will miss about her. No more quick baked potatoes. No more easy Rotel dip. No more microwave popcorn for supper. No longer any such thing as warm leftovers. But you know what I have found I miss the most? The clock.

I don't have a DVR (and you can't see the stove, you know, for the wall) so the microwave was the only easily-viewable clock from my living room. Not a day has passed that I haven't looked in her direction to check the time, each glance a harsh reminder of what once was.

So for the past ten days, I have been struggling to survive my newfound, unintentionally Amish existence. I warmed up some queso dip in a saucepan last night. A saucepan, people. What is this, 1940?

And by the way, microwave popcorn on a stove? That doesn't work. It just burns the bag.

"But if I finish all of my chores and you finish thine, then tonight we're gonna party tonight like it's 1699..."