Breakfast Science Experiments

This morning was one of those fix-it-yourself breakfasts of bagels and cream cheese and grapefruit. Or whatever could be scrounged from the pantry if that didn't appeal. Bronwyn got her bagel sliced and in the toaster. Before long I could smell it burning. The toasted turned it to charcoal. Turning the toaster down a notch didn't do any better on the next bagel, even though we tried to watch it a little more carefully. At least there was enough bagel left to scrape and cut off the burnt parts. Liam launched full into scientist mode to figure whether the toaster was toast or not. We put in a piece of bread (less expensive than a bagel) and turned down the browning level more. Still charcoal. At this point the fire alarms started going off in the house. Thank goodness we don't have automatic sprinklers! After opening the doors for a few minutes to let out the smoke, we tried two more pieces of bread, the first turned all the way down to "air dry." Liam wondered if maybe the toaster was all backwards, so he put the last slice in turned all the way up to incinerate. Well, both ends of the spectrum resulted in incineration. Verdict: our toaster is toast. It's going to join our old DVD player in the garbage can. Unless someone out there wants some mechanical parts (speak now or forever hold your peace!).