Posted by Matou on Sun 11 Jan 04, 1:27 AM to Matou's blog.
According to Norse mythology, Loki was known as the God of mischief because of all his little pranks. According to some sources he was also known as the God of Fire, though they don't say why. I guess he must read my weblogs and have taken umbrage because he paid me a visit after VE last night.
As many of you will know, last night was Blue Velvet and cerbie's Velvet Eden. It started off very quiet but then brightened up very quickly with lots of people arriving at once. It was a great night and judging by the applause, the electricity demo went down a storm. (Sorry!!) I didn't get to see it because I was keeping an eye on a particular piece of equipment, waiting for it to become free and I was having a little electricity demo of my own with the aid of my Black Box.
We did get to play and had I had a great Scene, very tactile, very sensuous and the subbie seemed to enjoy herself too. That always helps. (Many thanks to the loggers I spoke with last night - your sweet words will be passed on.)
Anyway, to cut a long story much shorter, I didn't leave until after 3:00am late for me. I got home, and did the first part of the ritual that cerrynn and I have after every Scene night out. I walked the dogs. (Exciting stuff, this, isn't it?) Cerrynn is usually making our coffee while I brave whatever elements are current. Then we sit down, drink our coffee and cognac and talk about the evening. It's something we find very enjoyable and look forward to and I get feedback on whatever scenes we have played. All the little details that I file away in my packrat memory for later use.
Talking of which, my packrat memory let me down last night and I must hang my head in shame. I addressed pippin by his previous name. I forgot that it had changed. MsVamp and pippin being the lovely people that they are they soon forgave me.
Back to the story. I made my coffee, had a brief chat with cerrynn on MSN (one of the very few occasions that the time difference isn't a nuisance). Now you know by now that I am dreadfully sentimental so what I did next won't surprise you. I lit the candles on the shelf over the fireplace, turned off the lights and put Enigma on the CD player and then thought through the evening, just as we would talk it through if she was actually here. Yes, I know I'm a sad case but it was very pleasant anyway.
Ok most of you are guessing where this is going and guessing correctly, I bet. I fell asleep well, I had been up for 21 hours. I woke to a room full of smoke, and the wallpaper on fire above the fireplace. The shelf itself was a mess of wax and burning plastic (what remained of the clock). Rather belatedly, the smoke alarm in the hall went off as soon as I went to get something to extinguish the flames. (Mental note: get more smoke alarms.) As fires go this one was rather wimpy so I managed to put it out quite quickly. Then turn off the blasted alarm before someone called the fire brigade THEN deal with the smoke. The damage isn't really that bad and we have to redecorate before we move out anyway but it is going to take me days to clean up all the horrible black, greasy dust that has now appeared over everything and heaven only knows how long it will be before the smell of burnt plastic finally disappears.
I still can't work out what happened. We have been using candles on the shelf there for years with no problems. It did teach me that good sealing on a door can be a pain and that just one alarm isn't enough. The fur people are fine by the way they slept through the whole bloody thing!
It could have been much, much worse. This log might never have been written. So I am putting this one down as one of Loki's little pranks. As long as he keeps his jokes away from cerrynn and her return, he can do what he likes with me. Getting my own back would be nice, though.
The other curious thing is that I was able to take this with more equanimity than is normal for me. Normally, I would rail at my incompetence, rant on how stupid I had been. I put this calm down to a number of things. I don't *know* what I did wrong, what was different this time. I was still on a bit of a high from Velvet Eden and I'm feeling quite positive about cerrynn being back with me soon
and not least because when I got home from work an email was waiting for me. It was from that one person I mentioned in my last log, the one I gave thanks to? It was lovely. I read it to cerrynn over the telephone and she was as touched and impressed as I. I'm not going to go into details here but isn't it wonderful how one nice comment can outweigh several nasty ones? Thank you again, dear lady.
Matou
Edited Sun 11 Jan 04, 1:32 AM by Matou
