You know how it is if you're the first kid to leave home, you suddenly discover how much of an economic drain you've apparently been on the family. The sister gets a car and her own room. The brother gets to charge cool clothes at the "Toggery" to the parents' account without paying back from an after school job. The fam moves to a larger, nicer house with a functioning dishwasher and Mom gets an Amana Radar Range microwave oven.

However, this MMMLog isn't about birth order goodies and baddies. Mmmmm's talking about one of her favorite things: technology, ancient to be sure. The Amana Radar Range. I think Mom bought hers in 1968-69 shortly after the microwave oven's debut. Almost twenty years later she gave it to me and it still nuked nicely. We moved it to Louisville where I sold it at a garage sale for a very small amount, though the savvy buyer probably knew if for what is was--a valuable electronic antique.

The "portable" Amana Radar Range Microwave oven must have weighed 30 or 40 pounds and was clad in shiny metal, probably highly polished lead to shield the cook and the neighbors from the magnetron's deadly waves. Mom did worry about the oven's possible leaking and never stood in front of the darned thing when it was nuking her perfectly "fried" egg, something I've never been able to duplicate with any microwave oven. Mom could make that Radar Range tap dance as well as decently cook anything she she put in there on a paper plate or towel. Actually, I learned to nuke a cup of tea from my dad who puts teabag with tag into the cup of water and zaps for a couple of minutes. But what about the metal staple, you ask. I think in the old days it might have blown the door off the Radar Range, just kidding, but with today's microwaves there's no sparks or dancing blue lights. Yeah, I've seen it happen--on an Alaskan cruise in a Seattle Museum of the Mysteries seminar. A local "scientist", I think you've got to call him, demonstrated a number of interesting "effects" in a microwave--zapping steel wool, other metals and materials. Absolutely fascinating, though I did notice that the audience (Mmmm leading the pack) who had crowded around the small microwave as if it were a punchbowl, moved their chairs way back at the first terrifying light show of agitated electrons.

My webmistress tells me that MMMLog has a nice ranking but seems it's a bit unfocused as I tend to blog about whatever interests me on a given day instead of strictly writing about my books, workshops and other related Mmmmm Brand products as most do online. In my mind, my interests and experiences flow together to create an MMMMMmm perspective, however commercially unfocused, that may be helpful or inspiring in some way to me and to itinerate keyword searchers and regular readers of the inward spiraling stream of consciousness that is MMMLog.

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMelinda