(Not) Burning Down the House

Andrea & I had decided that it was time for the garage to be arranged. It is a mess, and we couldn't access anything (like the Christmas tree box). Hence, our Christmas tree is still up. So we decided to be proactive, and get something done. Andrea asked if we could put my space heater in the garage to take the edge off. So I put the heater in the garage, and we waited and had dinner while it tried to warm up. Eventually, Andrea & I did go down there, while James & Michael stayed up stairs watching TV. We moved things around, made piles of things to dump, excavated the Christmas tree box, and put Mocha's kennel back under the table where it belonged. We had freed up quite a bit of space when I looked up (God's providence I am sure), and noticed that the power strip was smoking. (it was not the regular rectangular kind, but the octopus kind, that has 5 "legs" to plug things into, so that the spacing of big adapters doesn't matter.) I quick ran over the the outlet, pulled it out, noticed that in addition to the smoke, the backside was also on fire, which I quickly blew out, unplugged the heater plugs, opened the garage door, and threw it into a snow bank -- (Where it still resides). It all happened so fast, but fortunately, nothing else caught on fire. It did smell pretty bad though. Then, since the garage door was open anyway, we put the trash stuff in the trash can, almost froze (Yes, we were wearing coats), and went inside to tell James what happened. I told him not to mind the burnt plastic smell in the garage, and that we were fine and we hadn't burned down the house. Both James & Andrea were glad that Michael had not insisted on helping us in the garage, because he would have started screaming. Amazing enough, I felt very calm, and didn't even think about panicking. I'm not sure what Mocha's reaction was, because I think she was upstairs as well, so I don't think she smelled anything wrong.