Broken

The cats, in an attempt to prove once and for all that the sun orbits the Earth and Galileo was a punk-a$$ chump, just broke the Galileo thermometer my sister gave to me for Christmas a few years ago.

They were playing and one of them — probably Sally — was getting all monkey with it and climbing on the bookshelf and probably jumped off, making the shelf rock and sending the thermometer to the ground. At least, that's my theory. I didn't actually see what happened.

Luckily, it hit an area rug and not the hardwood, or it would have completely shattered. As is, it just broke off the little reservoir tip and leaked paraffin all into the rug. (This whole time I thought it was water in there. Good to know that it's really effing flammable!) And into the hardwood below. I scrubbed as best I could, but I'm sure it's going to leave a smelly stain. On the rug and the floor. And now it smells like paraffin in the whole apartment, which is making me have flashbacks to the ice storm of '94 (I think) when my family lived in our basement for two weeks, heated only by a kerosene heater and lit only by hurricane lamps. That was nuts.

So now, because I can't just throw this thing away, I've got to figure out something to do with the little temperature bulbs.