Mongolia 15, Scott & Ashlee 0

As you may know, according to government mandate central heating across Mongolia was shut off on May 1st. Unfortunately, just because the calendar says it's almost summer doesn't mean it actually is. Sure, we have had a spot of nice weather every now and then for the past 6 weeks -- heck, a couple of days reached into the 70s and Ashlee and I were able to enjoy cocktails on our balcony looking out onto Olgii's central square. Overall, however, the weather remains temperamental and mostly on the chilly-side...which is a bummer now that we don't have heat in our apartment.

With the radiators blasting away, the inside temperature hovered around 75F. Nice, huh? Now with the heat off, we're more at the mercy of the elements and the heat ranges between 60F and 70F, which I admit isn't terrible -- but it's not exactly great either.

Anyways, the other day we had another lovely spring snow storm plunging the mercury down into the high 20s. Feeling pretty miserable, we remembered that we have a couple of PC-issued space heaters -- we've had them all year but we were never able to use them in our house because they completely overwhelmed our electrical system. So we took one out of it's box and plugged it in. A brand new unit, it worked like a charm. During the first couple of uses, we were sure to monitor it carefully -- checking the power strip and making sure we didn't have too many appliances (oven, computer, refrigerator, kettle, distiller, etc.) on at a time. Feeling confident, we let our vigilance lapse -- sorry, Mad-Eye, we forgot your advice.

Just yesterday morning we were going through our usual routine of coffee, tea, and oatmeal with the space heater blasting away at our feet when we were interrupted by a not-so-subtle burning smell. A bit alarmed, we traced the smell from the heater to the power strip it was plugged into to and then to the wall socket, which was concealed behind one of our coat racks. As I pushed Ashlee's fleece aside, this is what I found:




Needless to say, we are no longer using our space heater. Stupid electricity. Plus, until we can get my school's electrician to fix the outlet we have to sit in our tiny kitchen to use the computer. It's ok -- we'll be in America in less than a month...