Spontaneous Bustion

Here's what's been happening around here lately.

A few nights ago I was minding my own business, making dinner, when I heard a crash from the other room. I thought maybe one of my kids had crashed into something, and possibly gotten hurt, but I couldn't imagine what they ran into that would make that sound. So I went into the living room, crying out, "What was that?!"

Here's (some of) what I saw, although it took a minute to register:

What on earth?!

The glass on the left side of our glass-topped computer desk just...exploded! Nobody was sitting at the desk, or even very close to it. It wasn't hot or cold (and it's tempered glass anyway). It just spontaneously shattered! There were bits of glass in about a three-yard radius from the desk.

When we all recovered from the shock I told the kids to clean up while I finished making dinner.

Ryan sweeps up what he can.

After hearing Ryan cut himself a few times I gave up on dinner and went back to help out. (Very minor, although no less irritating, cuts; nothing to worry about.) The living room carpet got the best vacuuming job it's had in a long time, I'm sure.

And now the desk looks like this:

We will have to figure out what to put there to replace the glass. And, as in algebra, whatever we do to one side we should probably do to the other side.

So that was one thing.

The next thing wasn't so spontaneous—quite the opposite, actually—but it's been interesting to see. We have a metal roof, which is nice because it will last longer than shingles will. Well, in the winter we get lots of snow, and then when the day warms up all of the snow slides off of the front (west) side of the roof into a big heap on the driveway and our front porch. (Usually after we've already shoveled.)

But for some reason it doesn't fall all the way off of the back side of the roof. (Probably because we don't have to shovel back there.)

Well, here is what's been happening this year: The snow on the back (east) side of the roof would start to melt, and it would start to slide down, and then it would freeze up again. So it was creating this wall of ice that hung down from the patio roof.

taken from the inside of my great-room window
If you look closely you can see water dripping from the icicles
(it's really not just dirt on my window—although there is, admittedly, some of that, too).

Here's what it looked like from inside the patio.

I wish I had gotten another picture yesterday morning because on the right side (behind the grill) that sheet of icy snow had finally met up with the snow on the ground. And because of the way it melted every day and then refroze we had layered rows of icicles that looked like shark's teeth. But, alas! Yesterday it finally all came crashing to the ground before I could get another photo.

Now it just looks like this:

This was a much more interesting sight to see:

Well, anyway, that's been the excitement in our house for this week.