New Thing #3--Life & Times of a Glass Tabletop

New Thing #3--Life & Times of a Glass Tabletop

So, a few weeks ago Derrick & I were sitting outside having dinner on our cute little patio on our quite-new outdoor table. We’d only had the pleasure of eating outside a handful of times & this was only our second or third time enjoying our time outside alone.

We had very little food-food (isn’t it funny how sometimes it seems like all you have is canola oil, half a rotted onion, frozen fruit & stale sugar cones?) in the house & we didn’t want to spend money on food or even really feel like going out, so I scrounged around & threw together a dinner of whole wheat spaghetti with tomato & chick pea sauce, a little bread that I found in the freezer & a kinda random salad. You know how triumphant you feel after managing to slap together a meal when you thought you didn’t really have anything to eat? Yeah, I was feelin’ it.

So anyway, we go outside with our plates & get all settled. D was scheduled to have some friends over for a game in about an hour, so we relished the time we had outside together. We’re both chomping on our salad (I even sliced up the THREE kalamata olives we had left, C’MON!), chatting & catching up on the happenings of the day when--

*BAM*

--what the shit was that?!? There was a huge explosion-like sound. We both immediately looked up at the sky, looking for the tree that fell on our house or the shotgun round that was fired in the air or the plane that crashed in our front yard, & then we both looked down, feeling the tinkling of glass on our legs. And then noticed the spaghetti and broken dishes and lettuce on our feet.

We were both frozen in time--I still had my fork in my hand on the way to my mouth--staring at our laps & the ground.

“What the hell just happened?!?” I stifled a laugh of disbelief as D yelled out something a bit more vulgar for the first of many times that evening.

This is what happened:

Awwwesooooooooooome.

So, as Lucy yowled from the window (aw, nervous for her human parents!) D canceled the game (he was also bleeding) & we went to work cleaning up this horrible mess. To add insult to injury, Derrick hadn’t even had a bite of pasta yet so he was extra pissed, if that is even possible. The whole thing was just completely & utterly ridiculous.

Hours later, after we cleaned up & went out to pickup a pizza & ice cream (farewell, healthy dinner) I did some research & found that tempered glass table tops are not covered under warranty or guaranteed because extreme temperature fluctuations, inclusions in the glass during the manufacturing process, slight chips & a host of other things can cause the glass to shatter. Of course there’s no warning on tempered glass table when you buy them. Crazy that they still sell them, right? Oh, business. So yeah. It’s totally not unheard of & upon venting to people on good ol’ Facebook & D talking to people at work, we now know that this has happened to a bunch of other people, too…though not while they were sitting at the table, eating dinner.
Know what else we know now, too?

Never, ever buy a table with a tempered glass table top, unless you want things to get real, real fast.