I started a fire in the newsroom this morning. And I don’t mean I initiated a heated conversation among co-workers. I mean there were actual flames. In the microwave. Coming from my travel coffee mug.

Well, BK’s travel mug. I’d like to say — at least for purposes of this blog — that I was so distracted by wedding plans and juggling phone calls from potential vendors that with my head in another place I absent-mindedly stuck a coffee mug partially made of metal in the microwave. But I really have no excuse. I just wasn’t thinking. And it just happened. Rough morning.

The flames were small enough they could easily be blown out (I was too panicked so a fellow TH-er and friend leaned into the microwave and assumed this crucial task), but the microwave itself may be a goner due to the melted plastic that’s splattered all over its insides.

The travel mug, with its mangled handle, is now sitting on the fire escape. I feel bad because BK got it from his old firm and it’s kind of like a badge of honor representing a time in his life when he worked more than he slept, ate — did anything.

Someone walking down the hallway leading into the newsroom said it smelled like a truck was parked in here, emitting exhaust fumes. That’s the burnt plastic. Oops.

My dad and I have a running joke. He noticed that each time I’d spill or drop something (sadly, it happens fairly often), I’d say, "oops." A couple of years ago he began saying it himself. I’d spill a drink on the kitchen counter or drop food on my shirt (stain stick is my BFF) and he’d yell, "Oops!" And then repeat it several times because he knows it makes me laugh.

While spills are a weekly — sometimes daily — occurrence for me, a microwave fire is a brand new "oops." There’s a first time for everything.