Friday, December 6, 2013

LDOC and Explosions

Happy LDOC!  LDOC = Last Day Of Classes (for the semester), in case you were curious.  Actually, LDOC was a few days ago, but with college schedules differing so much, perhaps it is someone's LDOC.

And now it's time for a story.  Let's set the stage.  My roommate and I have bunked our beds together and the ladder that I use is next to our mini-fridge.  We use the space (about 2.5 ft high) under my roommate's bed for storage.  The floor is cleared in the space in front of the mini-fridge except for my roommate's bag containing holiday gift bags, etc. and some expired orange juice and an expired individual serving of chocolate milk that had been removed to make more space in the fridge.

I was studying for finals and reclining on the couch, facing the fridge.  I could not see the floor due to the armrest.  So there I was, minding my own business, and something explodes.  My first thought was that it was a party popper or something that my roommate had that just went off randomly.  It even threw things, maybe confetti, in the air!  And that's kind of cool and exciting.  

But the truth was neither cool nor exciting.  I stood up to find the once full chocolate milk bottle leaning on its side above a puddle of soured milk.  The souring milk had released enough gas to build up enough pressure in the plastic bottle for the bottom to pop outwards and the cap to fly off.  The "confetti" had been drops and chunks of milk.  Yuck!

So instead of continuing to study, I rushed to move things out from under the bed, where a significant amount of the milk was.  Then I was faced with cleaning up the rest of the mess.  While spilled milk might not be something to cry over, exploded soured milk might be.  Phew, the smell of it!  Even after soaking it all up and taking everything to the dumpster outside, the whole room smelled awful.  So I wiped the area down with some lemon scented wipes, which masked the smell some, but left our floor very sticky.  After about a day I wiped down the area again with just water to remove the stickiness and any remaining weird combination of smells.  Overall, wouldn't it have been much better to just take the expired milk to the dumpster in the first place?  Oh yes, a thousand times yes.