Every year (or almost every year, depending on the year) we have a pizza party for the tenants. It’s shared housing but semi-seperate houses so usually one household doesn’t know the neighbors . . . well. That’s what the pizza part of the party is for! There’s something unique about it. You see, the ingredients of pizza all stick together when hot. The same is true for the people eating the pizza. Even though they (each household) don’t know each other, they kinda bond together like pizza does. Why? Well, since heat melts together (in a way) the ingredients of the pizza, the roaring bonfire we have makes everybody so hot that they can’t help but mingle and socially bond. (that’s why saunas became popular) Plus, the pizza helps augment and establish the connection (as well as the metaphor) metaphor. Food and people are related and help people relate to other people. Why? Well, what usually connects people is commonality. What people all have in common is that they like food! I mean, who doesn’t? So when they are there and food is in front of them, it’s a friend-fusing ready to happen!

Ok, but back to the story. This year, Luke ‘n I thought of something revolutionary for the party. You see, we get the pizza 30 minutes before the party starts and the minute it leaves the car, it starts to cool down. Sure, it’s not cool, in fact, it’s warm. But it’s not piping! Since we have all gather around a fire when we eat ‘n chat, why not a hot plate on the fire? I can’t believe we didn’t think of it earlier. It’s genius! A steel plate heated by the fire providing the plate with a toasty topside.

With the nice junk department in our house (the most valuable stuff in the house mind you), we easily found a nice flat piece of steel. Thing was, it was covered in rust. Now, I didn’t mind putting my pizza on it, but we were pretty sure the rest of the party goers would be a little un-enthused.

Well, I thought, “This doesn’t take a genius” and got out a jug of rust dissolver. As I was unscrewing the cap, Mama quickly stopped me ’cause “it’s toxic”. Well jeez, it’s not like I was gonna leave it on there. In any case, I put the jug away and I got my trusty steel bristle brush and started scraping away. That worked well and in five minutes, I got all the rust off.

After that and some other set up, we got the pizzas and people started arriving. Not many people actually. In fact, half of the people who RSVP’d didn’t come (or to put it more positively, half of the people who RSVP’d came.) But that’s ok. They just didn’t get the memo that they would have to pay for all the pizza that wasn’t eaten! . . Kidding! Kidding, kidding. (but I’m sure you knew that, right?)

But even so, it was still good. We had fun talking, eatin’ and most importantly, basking in the success (at least, we thought so) of the hot plate!

Now, it got interesting. One of our friends (at the party) said that he locked his bike up outside his house for a while and the tires got stolen. Then, a week later, somebody cut the lock and got the frame. I told him how I took a brief read of the MIT Guide to Lockpicking and was given a reality check on just how unsecure locks are. I told him how quick I could probably open a lock so out of some spare metal, I made a quick pick and a tension wrench and sure enough, I got our door open in 3 seconds! (we’ve drastically upgraded our locks since then so don’t get any ideas) He wanted to see if we could break into his house so, ten minutes later, we all were at his door and sure enough, it didn’t take that long to get past that one. However, after we opened the door, we noticed a problem. To unlock the door, I turned the cylinder of the lock (which you do when turn a key). The problem was, it seemed a pins were stuck and we couldn’t turn the cylinder back! Uh oh. So, we tried all sorts of things until we realized the spring was broken and we had to replace the lock.

So, we got one of our locks and stuck it on the door for a temporary lock. Then, the next day, we bought some good locks that I couldn’t even crack.

Pizza and replacing locks! Doesn’t get much better than that, right?