A really cool puff of smoke

A really cool puff of smoke, that’s what you get when you don’t pay enough attention.  Oh, African power grid, why you so whacky?   Round prongs on the power plugs, 220 volts at the outlet.  What up with that?  Important lesson learned.  Just because you can plug something in, doesn’t mean you should plug something in.  In other news, raise your hand if you have bought a VHS player in the last decade.  Nah, you are nowhere near that cool.

                I moved into my new room and the AC was not working.  I since figured out that it was iced over and defrosted it.  Don’t know how long that will last, but we will see.  There was a small electric fan clipped on the bed, so I decided to use that while defrosting the AC.  I plugged in the fan into a weird-ass power strip and turned it on.  The blade began to move and I got a really cool puff of smoke, and the fan burned out.  D-E-D.  Dead.  Just because the plug fit into the weird power strip, (I really need to attach a picture of some of these things on this blog, I will figure out how,)  does not mean that the fan cold handle 220 volts.  There is a 110 volt step down transformer that I bought off the outgoing guy for 20 bucks.  It was in a box when he gave it to me.  I guess it should have been used with the fan.  Belatedly, I looked at my laptop and nook power supplies, and say that they both use 110-230 V.  Whew, ‘bout blew my shit up.  That would have been bad, man!  Got to remember to check my camera battery charger before I plug that in.  If I ever get it.

 

Wierd-ass power strip

                The mail is a very iffy proposition here.  It was really regular and stable until things went to shit in Israel, now it’s Insha’Allah.  I mailed a box of clothes and my camera bag (with the damn battery charger) to myself because I need the space in my duffel bags.  In addition to being stupid enough to mail my battery charger, I mailed all my shorts, keeping none in my duffel bags.  I know my thinking at the time.  “Damn,” said I, “it’s 19 degrees, I don’t need shorts.  Send them off.”  Good thinking.  So, off to the post store goes I to buy a pair of shorts.  Remember the 2 degrees off I was mentioning earlier in the blog?  Here you go.  European sizes.  I apparently wear a size 44 shoe.  I grabbed a pair of “32” shorts off the rack.  I have worn a size 32 waist since I got out of the Army.  The first time.  I live in a 32 inch waist.  The shorts were not even close.  32 may have technically been the waist size, but that’s where similarities ended.  The waist sort of fit but…  Remember that the Speedo is really popular in Europe?  These shorts were designed with that sensibility in mind.  There was no room in the junk drawer.  When a pair of shorts gives me the dun-lop disease with my junk, there is a problem.  That fashionable, I don’t want to be.

                Last, but not least, VHS.  VHS is a going concern in the Sinai.  Seriously.  I shit you not.  We have this really cool outdoor theater that plays fairly new movie releases.  For some weird-ass reason we get the movies in VHS format.  The guy that had my job before me had a Jurassic Audiovox VHS player shipped over here, so I gave him 20 bucks for it.  We can play new release movies at out leisure.  On VHS.  Too strange to be fiction.  TIS.