It’s a good thing I don’t have working smoke detectors. (Shhh. Don’t tell my landlord. Or — shudder — my insurance company.) Because if my smoke detectors worked (and they look like they do, even though they don’t), I would have had one more thing to deal with tonight. Noise pollution, on top of smoke pollution.

I hate this sad little stove that I inherited when I moved in here. And tonight when I tried to use the grill pan to make Spicy Honey Chicken, I had to hold the pan’s handle to keep the bottom of it on the burner. There’s only one burner that’s large enough in surface area for the grill pan, and it’s way lopsided. Plus, the grill pan’s handle is so heavy that it tilts the pan completely off the burner, unless I hold it in place.

That probably wasn’t what caused the smoke, but I couldn’t deal with it very well while I was holding the handle, either. I think maybe the Crisco olive oil spray that I put on the grill pan before I put the chicken on was what caused the smoke. By the time the chicken was done, I couldn’t see across the room. I did turn the stove’s fan on while I was standing there, and afterward I faced the big box fan out the screen door and turned it on high. So the smoke became someone else’s problem.

Anyway, the spicy honey glaze I made turned out good, and it made the chicken taste like something. When something tastes like chicken, that means it doesn’t have any taste at all, so I’ve tried a lot of recipes to help it along. The other night it was a brandy and cream sauce, which I’ll try again. The honey glaze? Way too much work (and way too much cleanup).

Friday afternoon I decided to set up the new fax machine I mentioned as a stand-alone copier. There was an old copier, a big, heavy, professional-looking one that stopped working about five years ago, sitting on top of the stand I wanted to use for the new one. Somehow, in trying to get the old copier off the stand, I wrenched my back just a tad, and I thought for awhile that I’d torn my arms out of their sockets.

I guess I’m not cut out for that kind of heavy lifting, but I survived. I’m feeling better now, but I nearly dropped the big old machine on the floor during the process. I ended up moving a cooler chest over by the stand as a transition point. Now the old copier is sitting in the middle of the floor, useless except for taking up valuable space. I’m good at creating situations like that, and then letting them just lie there festering for months, or even years. But I’m not much up for trying to lift the thing again, that’s for sure.