"a guy who knows his way around a kitchen"

I've heard a few women list this in their "wants" for a dude, and I always crack up a little bit.

I DO know my way around the kitchen, although in my own kitchen, that leans primarily towards intimate knowledge of where the fire extinguishers are located (and where I put the beer).

A gal asked me a while back if I would cook for her, and I replied "sure ...but most of the dates I've done that for would PAY me not to do it again!"

...ah, but those romantic evenings in the emergency room!

My mother asked me if I needed a kitchen timer when I moved, and I told her I was pretty sure the smoke detector works here.

Yeah, I can even fuck up the recipe for ice cubes, but I guess I get by even though the neighborhood roaches have boycotted my place (...they do look kind of cute with their tiny little "even we have standards!!!" picket signs in a creepy insectile kind of way though).

I always have fun with the self-depreciating humor about my lack of aptitude with cooking. I'm one of four siblings, and it would appear that I'm the only one who never took to it; the upside to that deficiency is that I'm also the only one who has never had weight problems. All of my sibs play at least two musical instruments as well, and I'm stuck with the measly one (OK, I admit that my one is the stereo, but I think I play it pretty well!). I guess it all equals out one way or another.

Moving forward though; when I moved into my place, I noticed that the microwave didn't work, and I didn't really give it a second thought as I had my own anyway. I've been here for nearly four weeks now, but Monday was the first time I actually decided to cook something up though (I thought about trying to throw some french-sounding spin on "hamburger helper" in the above statement, but I didn't think it would fool anyone). Using my vast amount of mechanical knowledge, I was able to divine that when you turn a burner on, the lack of any sort of heat indicates a problem.

All the apartments here have an oven/stove with a built-in microwave, and I guess it just never really occurred to me that since the controls for the oven and stove are shared with the microwave controls, that the whole thing wasn't working, but I guess I discovered that fairly quickly. I felt a little bit silly going in and turning in a service request this far down the line, but I just didn't quite have the lead in my ass to pull the bulky affair out from the wall by myself, so I just swallowed my pride and went ahead and did it.

The head maintainance dude here was in the office when I turned it in, and he gave me one of those "suspicious" sideways looks (you're just NOW figuring that out?!); I even admitted that I didn't think it was plugged in, but couldn't find the outlet because I couldn't get the thing pulled out.

...another "suspicious glare. I said "dude! ...I'm a single guy!" (the fact that I haven't actually BEEN here a lot since the move doesn't hurt either, but still ...I can see where he was coming from)

When I got in late last night, the clock on the microwave was blinking and there was a note on the counter: "it's working now. You were right, it was unplugged."

Although part of me wants to feel vindicated, mostly I just feel like a dork!

So now I can "cook" to my hearts content; that ought to take about ...oops, there it went!