A noise, a smell and a scare in the middle of the night

Just a little background. We use a water distiller to purify the water we use for making coffee and tea. Our well water is safe; with no worries about impurities as far as we know and we really like the taste of it just plain cold from the tap, but making coffee and tea is another story. The tea ends up with scum floating on top and the coffee can get really bitter when made with just plain tap water. We also prefer it for ice cubes. Ice made from our tap water makes every cold drink its own snow globe, while the distilled cubes come out crystal clear. 

So we have a distiller and it is going most every night, in the winter it does double duty by putting extra heat into the back porch. In the summer I put it next to the window with the exhaust fan pulling that extra heat out of the house, but every night for several years and sometimes things go wrong. 

On Friday night I set it up as usual, but I did slosh some water over the edge of the container, I wondered a bit about the plugs and sockets being okay, but I didn’t really worry about it, I have sloshed a little water over before and nothing happened. I plugged it in, set the timer we have it on so it kicks on at about midnight, and later went to bed. 

I am not sure what woke me up, but I think it was the noise of the breaker popping, but I knew as soon as I awakened that something was very wrong. First of all I could smell hot wiring. I didn’t know about the breaker at that time, but I knew that somewhere in my house some wiring was getting hot. I got up and went looking for problems. The second thing I noticed was that the bathroom circuit was off. The distiller is plugged into an outlet on that circuit. 

I headed for the distiller and it wasn’t running, it should have been going by then, I unplugged the timer from the outlet, then unplugged the cord from the outlet. I examined both of them, by flashlight of course because I hadn’t reset the breaker yet. They both looked and smelled fine. Then I unplugged the main cord from the distiller. I barely got it out of the receptacle in the unit when I knew where the problem was. That cord was fried. I don’t know if it was the water, or if the old distiller, which we have had for several years, had just gave up the ghost. But whatever caused the problem, I had found it. I walked back to the breaker box and reset that breaker, the night lights in the bathroom came on, the cat water fountain started working again, and the cooler, which is also in that circuit started running. 

I went back to bed and I am not sure I slept much more that night. A scare like that can make a person a little nervous about closing one’s eyes in sleep. 

Original Ranch Crispy Chicken

(From a Hidden Valley Ranch advertisement in a magazine from about 1975.)

1 packet Hidden Valley Original Ranch Dressing Mix

¼ cup cornflake crumbs or unseasoned bread crumbs

6-8 pieces of chicken with bone and skin. (I suppose it could be done with strips or just wings too)

Combine dressing mix and crumbs in a large plastic bag, add chicken and shake to coat. Bake on an ungreased baking pan at 375º for 50 minutes. Makes 4-6 servings.