mr. rampy left town for the weekend a couple of months ago to go see a concert in Vermont. You'd think I could manage by myself for a weekend, but not so much.

Middle sis moved in with us last May after she graduated with a super-employable Masters in Theology (her moving-in is either A. part of some �ber-plan wherein she ends up as our children's nanny or B. because the Three's Company quotient of our lives was running low) so I felt obligated to keep the "household" up and running instead of slumming it with canned soup, straight and unheated from the can, for the whole weekend.

As a result, on Friday I actually cooked dinner, using the stove and everything. Everything was going swimmingly until right at the end when I was pouring cooked spaghetti noodles into the pot of sauce and a colander tipped out of a cabinet above me and crashed heavily onto the stove top.

That was a little jarring, but since the colander hadn't hit me or dinner, I gaily dished up the spaghetti and vacated the area. However, two hours later, when putting the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, I was like "What is that funny smell?" Of course, somehow the force of the falling colander put out the pilot lights on the top of the stove and gas had been leaking out ever since.

I had vague memories of a pilot light going out in the stove in my bachelorette apartment and me calling a friend on the phone, telling her to hang up and dial 911 if she heard any explosive noises, and laying on my stomach so I could wave a flattened cereal box--lit on fire--underneath the stove where I thought the pilot light should be. So already this situation was much better than that, even more so because apparently being a married yuppie means you always have a good supply of Crate & Barrel long fireplace matches on hand.

I had middle sis come spot for me in case the gas did incinerate me, but we managed to relight the stove without incident.

The next day we went downtown to see a movie, naturally picking a showtime right at the height of the Air & Water show so that there was no easy parking. Eventually we drove into the bowels of a building near the theater to park there. We were in a huge rush by this point, so I jammed a credit card into the entry machine without really paying any attention to the machine beyond reading the "Insert Card" label by the slit.

And the credit card jammed, and this parking lot guy sauntered over to see what the problem was, and I pointed out that the machine was jammed, and he was like "You know you don't put your credit card in there" and I was like "Obviously, not."

One dismantled parking lot machine later, we were safely parked and sprinting to the theater, me yelling "I swear to God there are parking lot machines you can pay with credit cards!"