I put my toaster in the dishwasher

Jon and I got a few household items from craigslist, including a toaster. Unfortunately, the toaster smelled like sweet, rancid frozen pastries and it wasn't just fixed by cleaning that tray on the bottom. We got it anyways because a toaster is better than no toaster and I figured I could clean it. I did a bit of searching online for people who had done some kind of immersible intense cleaning but I didn't find a whole lot about toasters. I did find someone whose computer was buried in a mudslide so they decided they had nothing to lose by disassembling it and washing it in the sink like dishes. Of course they let it dry for quite a while (at least a month). It worked! So I figured if a computer had a chance of surviving something like that I could try it on my toaster. Unfortunately, I can't find the link back where I read about the computer.

Like I said, the toaster was nasty, and I didn't think the dishwasher alone would cut it. I of course unplugged the thing and soaked it for a while in the sink to loosen the baked-on pastry nastiness. Then I went at it with a bottle brush. I think this was the hardest part because the little heating elements are kind of fragile and I didn't want to scrape them off. I was able to get it mostly clean in the sink, but I decided to put it in the dishwasher because then it would go through a heated dry cycle. I though this would decrease the drying time by getting it most of the way dry in the dishwasher. I still waited a week to try it to be sure it was really dry. It worked! It smoked a bit while it burned off whatever had been washed against the heating elements. It doesn't look new, but it looks and smells a lot better than it did when we got it.

While I'm posting about random stuff anyways, I just did my 2007 taxes online. I am actually poor enough to quality for an Earned Income Credit. I'm not entirely sure how they decide how large my EIC will be, but my deductions were greater than my Adjusted Gross Income so maybe that has something to do with it. The bottom line is that my 2007 refund will actually be $400 more than the amount of taxes taken out of my paychecks. The government is giving me $400 because I earned so little this year. I feel kind of awkward about this like it must be some kind of a mistake, but I checked and double-checked.

In other random news, when we woke up this morning there was ice on the inside of our double-paned bedroom window. It's cold outside.