Happy DIY 2015

I started the year out strong, by dismantling an electric heater that's been terrifying me every winter morning in this apartment since I moved in back in 2007, and probably terrified my friend Yancey since the day he bought the place in the mid-nineties.

And once I dissected it, learning that one breaker powered only the heater and nothing else, I had no idea why it had taken me so long to realize that. I could have flipped the breaker years ago, left the heater in the wall, and not worried about a sublet person starting a fire or about the dangers of having a heating element covered in the accumulated dust of 1987 (when the building was "renovated") and 2014.

I want to congratulate myself and bask in the glory of dismantling a fire hazard. But instead, I just wonder why I didn't flip off the circuit breaker the first week I lived here.