My Big Adventure

When I decided yesterday morning to write about my day's adventures, I thought my entry would be about my experiences on the various forms of available transportation here and my wanderings on both sides of the bay. As it turns out, yesterday's most exciting adventure happened right here at home. It was a glass.

After breakfast, I went to wash my dishes. I noticed a fair-sized pile of dirty dishes in the sink and decided to do them, too. Soap - check, sponge - check, faucet - on, water - swirling, glass - caught up in the flow, pop! right into the disposal. Such a perfect fit, it was as if the sink came with a cup holder. Great :/

I immediately turned off the water and stood staring at the concentric circles, imprinted stainless steel "Kenmore", black rubber, glass rim. The sink drained slowly as water ran between the rubber and glass. The glass was also full of water, and it did not drain. I tried putting my hands into the glass and pulling upwards by pushing out. Glass; slippery when wet. No Good. I scooped water out of the glass and splashed it into the sink's other side. Dried my hands. Tried again. No better.

Wiggle, wiggle. If I jostled the glass just so, I was able to grab onto the rim on one side of the glass. That helped empty the rest of the glass. It also slanted the other side of the rim under the metal lip of the disposal. Even worse. The glass was half under the rubber lip. I tried to get the rubber lip back outside the glass by turning the glass. Hopefully, the glass would stay above the rubber where it already was, and the glass from the underside would slide to the outside as it turned, sort of like putting on a Tupperware lid. Nope.

The glass sank below, the rubber slowly closed over. The little juice glass had just been swallowed by a black-gummed denture-less geriatric. But I wasn't giving up yet. I could move the glass around fairly freely in the large space below the sink. Ideas poured through my head, "if I could just get the glass upside-down and pull the narrower side up first," turned into, "maybe we can take the disposal out," and dissolved into "how about breaking the glass...." The first one wasn't working. The second one looked impossible thanks to sturdy epoxy, and the third one: too dangerous, absolute last resort.

I surrendered to the disposal. It was time to leave, to go off on the adventures that I thought were to be my excitement for the day. "Don't use this side of sink. There is a glass in the disposal." The yellow legal paper covered almost the whole basin. A fair warning to all would-be dish-washers.

I returned several hours later for a commercial break in my other adventures to find that one of my roommates had also tried getting the glass out. We had thought of all the same things. The glass remained in it's metal tomb. I left again.

Mid-afternoon, I returned home for good. The glass had moved, but only enough to signify that others had also tried to rescue it. The rubber of the disposal was now popped up and completely inside the glass, as though it were the beverage. No less than three of my roommates had emailed the management company that our disposal needed attention. I stared at the disposal. It rather looked like a flower. I sort-of wanted to take a picture; it seemed so artsy. But that disposal had been too difficult to deserve such an honor as a picture. Then, something occurred to me:

The reason we couldn't pull the glass out was because it just fit in the hole in the sink. There was no room for our fingers and the slippery glass made it too hard to get any sort of a grip. If only we could wedge something thin in between and pull on that.... but we'd have to somehow be able to pull on the bottom of the glass, nothing would be able to grip the sides of the glass. Ah ha!

I ran into my room and grabbed a plastic bag. "If I can get the glass in the bag while it's in the disposal..." One of my roommates looked on, a little skeptical, but hopeful too. Handle, in, under, pull. Other handle, still above the sink. Glass, part way in bag. Twist, pull, a little more. There! The glass was in the bag. Now, to get the other handle back above the sink. Twist, pull, shimmy, a little more. Ok! Two handles above the sink, glass in bag under the sink, and the best part was, somehow the glass had wound up upside-down!

As I pulled on the bag, I moved the glass into the center of the disposal. The glass started to come up. Slowly, slowly, then, vampire, it seemed to be jammed where the glass widened. My roommate and I looked at it. "Well, we could break the glass now, the pieces would be in the bag." That seemed like it would have to do, until I saw that the bag was tearing. So much for the hammer. I pulled a little more and the whole bag tore open. The glass remained, bottom-side up in the disposal.

Wiggle, wiggle, tug, pull. There was enough of the glass sticking out to get a fairly good handle on it. Whop! The glass was free!

And that was my big adventure: saving the glass from the garbage disposal. It only took all day. Sure beats solving the Rubik's cube if you ask me.

(Original Post)

Bedroom

Pleased

Rommates talking in kitchen