So My Pizza Broke My Oven

I was planning on pizza for my dinner last night, so waited for the oven to heat up, grabbed the pizza out of the freezer, stripped it out of its packaging, opened up the oven and went to put it inside, at which point it slid out of my hands. It hit roughly at the bottom hinge of the oven door, pivoted forwards and slammed into the oven shelves. At which point half the topping detached itself from the pizza and variously pelted the inside of the oven, or slid down into the gap the bottom of the door occupies when shut. So cue ten minutes of spearing individual bits of topping out with a fork while trying not to brand yourself. But eventually I'd gotten everything back where it belonged, put the pizza in the oven and closed the door behind it. I may have used a little more force than usual.

At which point the 60cm by 60cm glass fascia of the oven door fell off. Onto my toes.

On the positive side it wasn't actually hot. On the negative side, Ow! Also the bit that came loose and that normally holds it on is the handle of the oven door, which was still sort of attached, but not very. So getting the oven open without making things worse involved sliding a spatula into the side of the door and levering.

Of course things were too hot to fix there and then, so I had to leave it for today.

On the plus side the pizza was good.

Looking at the door in the cooled-down-now light of day, the handle, which is a piece of plastic the width of the door, is held down by three nuts and bolts which pass through the door from the inside, and the fascia is simply squeezed in place as the middle of the sandwich. Two nuts had bounced out of their slots in the handle and the other was half -unscrewed, so all of them needed completely unscrewing before I could completely detach the handle and put it all back together.

The square nuts are held in place by moulded square slots in the handle, so you don't need to hold them while fastening. This is just as well as I already needed four hands to put it back together. The whole assembly is probably meant to be screwed together while lying face down on a bench, in which case it's a clever piece of design, but it wasn't on a bench, it was on spring-loaded arms trying to hold it vertically against the front of the oven.

Putting it back together needed my knees bracing the bottom of the fascia into the little gutter that holds it at the bottom, another hand holding the door down to stop it trying to close, and another to hold the handle in place. And on the gripping hand, another hand to screw the bolts back in. Somehow I managed this, though getting everything in place involve sitting cross-legged on the floor, on my wheelchair cushion for extra height and then leaning/arching backwards at a really awkward angle in order to a) get my knees high enough to brace the fascia and b) my body out of the way so I could actually screw in the bolts. It's as well it's a low-mounted oven, there's no way I could have done it for an eye-level one, that would definitely be a two person job.

It didn't actually take that long to fix, but boy was it a pain. (Literally, the backache from arching backwards for ten minutes lasted a good couple of hours).

I need pizza. (But I'll be having pie and chips).

Recent Reading, Mar 22, Oh dear....

Exodus, Steve White and Shirley Meier

I've been re-reading odd bits of the David Weber and Steve White Starfire series while thinking about the associated game rules (the game came first, with Weber honchoing the third edition before he made it big as an author). And I came across a reference to White having published further books in the series. It turns out there are actually four more, apparently two linked duologies, one book with Meier and three with Charles Gannon. So I decided I'd pick up the first one for my Kindle.

And it would have to be the Kindle, because that cover is so bad I would have been embarrassed to buy it in store, or have it on my bookshelves. The book introduces a new species, the Arduin, who are basically humanoid, but specified as having three eyes, one large above two small, no nose, and with limbs that are somewhat tentacular and hands that are very tentacular. They're also bald, and are called "Baldies" by the humans throughout the book. So our artist interpreted this as an extremely well-endowed woman, wearing strategically-draped minimal clothing, with conventionally jointed limbs, though they do have the tentacular hands. And if you look closely you find that there is actually a third eye squeezed in at the bridge of the nose, which is covered in Star Trek Klingon brow-ridges. And god knows if she'd bald or not, because she's wearing an extremely ornate headdress, and I can't swear that part of it isn't supposed to be antennae. About the only thing the artist got right is that she has gold skin, And the '50s era looking blocky starships visible over her shoulder have tentacles extending out of their bottoms. ?!?

It is just so obvious the artist has taken a pre-existing image of a half-dressed woman and painted over it. *headdesk*

Unfortunately the writing also leaves something to be desired. It's basically the plot of the first Weber/White Starfire novel, Crusade, all over again - unknown species appears, decides they have a religious casus belli against all humans and launches a genocidal war egged on by corrupt churchmen while one alien leader wonders 'Are we the baddies?' And I was just complaining last month about Weber having used this plot three times already. There's actually some reasonably decent writing and characterisation, which is probably helped by most of the human characters being retreads from Insurrection, the last novel in the Weber-White timeline (though written second), even if they are, mostly, 80 years older. But some of the writing is just plain bad. One of the established major civilisations appears to have been put on a bus, while there's a supposedly important sub-plot about human resistance on an occupied planet that gets precisely three scenes, and if you are having two of your military characters lament about no one studying military history any more, do not mis-spell the name of Erwin Rommel. And for experienced military SF writers, the authors seem remarkably hazy about the appropriate ranks for characters.

But "Irwin Rommel" is not the only spelling or layout error, this is a book that literally talks about "armerments", and where every scene break indicator has gone AWOL, so you suddenly find yourself out of one character's POV and in that of someone on the other side, on a different planet, and months later.

It's just plain bad. The only way I could recommend it is if you were looking for additional background for the game, which basically I was, but still. (Though I did finally work out whether it was Weber or White who has a thing for short women, it's White.)

I also downloaded the Kindle sample for the next book, Extremis, with Gannon replacing Meier*. Which opens with a stirring speech with the (extremely short) resistance leader telling people "You're all marines now, and you'll use marine rank whatever service you came from". Which might have been more impressive if she wasn't a character whose rank was, and is confirmed immediately post-speech to remain, the naval rank of Commander. (Also, no civilians in the resistance?) *le sigh*

* Changing co-authors mid-duology is probably never a good sign.