My microwave makes me crazy. I rarely use it because, well, I think microwaves tend to ruin food more than anything. HOWEVER: they're great for some things like melting butter or heating up the cup of coffee you poured then forgot about although I wouldn't recommend making a habit of the latter because, well, we're now full circle back to the whole ruining food bit. A perfectly delicious cup of french-pressed coffee will not be as delicious after it's nuked, but it will do in a pinch.

Anyway. I melted some butter this morning for a recipe about which I will blog later (maybe, I have like 4 food blogs in my camera waiting to be liberated) and predictably it handled the job just fine, but here's the thing that makes Jen crazy: this fucker will sit there and beep every 10 seconds until you open the goddamned door or push the off button. I cannot tell you how much this vexes me. What I can tell you is this: had I known that his particular microwave had this particular feature, my particular ass would have passed it up for a different microwave that didn't feel the need to beep at me incessantly.

You see, I am not a fan of unneeded noise. If your dog barks at nothing for more than about 20 minutes, I'm probably going to hate you (this is why Nacho is a dick and I walk around with a squirt bottle practically attached to my person, see?). If your stupid SUV beeps every time you put it in reverse, I'm going to secretly make fun of you and on my really bad days, I'll probably think you should die. I've had two cars that came with that feature; I had Ford disable it before it left the lot and I disabled it myself on my Subaru (Subaru has a better idea: there's actually a switch in the back so you can do it yourself. God bless Subaru.) I can't stand douchebags who remove mufflers from their cars - have you ever noticed that they're also the same douchebags whose cars go BOOM BOOM BOOM everywhere they go? Yeah well, I hate them too.

My ears are a curse, I realize this. My whole life, I've been plagued by having almost dog-like hearing when it comes to irritating noises. At the ripe age of almost 40 and some 50 concerts later, my hearing has dulled somewhat, but not enough for me to retain any semblance of sanity in the face of irritating beeps, whines and whirs that happen in life. I can't take it - clearly, I need to move to a farm somewhere. CLEARLY.

Oh. Last night I discovered another use for microwaves: s'mores. I'm a traditionalist when it comes to s'mores in that I've always believed that the only way to make a s'more is with fire. A couple of months ago I bought some expensive, artisan-style marshmallows (I know, I know - they don't have HFCS, okay?) at Trader Joe's, along with some single serving chocolate bars. I'd intended for the kids to make s'mores the next time we grilled out, but then I forgot. And then when I *did* remember, we didn't have any graham crackers anymore. That all changed last week - we picked up some graham crackers to make key lime squares and suddenly, I have an almost full box of graham crackers, plus those expensive, artisan marshmallows were staring at me as if to say, "whatchoo gon' act like, boo" every time I opened the pantry. So last night, I popped open the package, placed one on top of a graham cracker and nuked it along with another graham cracker with chocolate on it. I learned that there is a fine line between melted perfectly and OH SHIT, MARSHMALLOW GOO, but I also learned that micro s'mores trump the crap out of campfire s'mores. Moan-inducing, knee-weakening goodness - I've never pulled a marshmallow out of the fire that was melted as perfectly.

I realized that this is what s'mores are supposed to taste like and WOW, this could be dangerous.