Mini Post on the Topic of the Enigmatic Oven

I have no legitimate complaints about Gamli Garður. Our rent is pretty low for having single rooms in the middle of the city. The common rooms, bathrooms, and laundry room are all perfectly decent. The building is well-insulated enough that even though it was already cold when I got here, it wasn’t until about a month ago that I actually started turning on my heat. I hate that my window is small and that I can’t see anything out of it except for THE INTERMINABLY GRAY SKY unless I stand on my desk, but that’s what comes of living in the basement, and it can’t be helped. The kitchen is usually in a pretty unfortunate state, but that’s what comes of sixteen people sharing a kitchen. So what’s wrong with the oven, you ask? Nothing much. As with the other things that irritate me about Gamli, it’s really just silly.

See this? Ignore the grossness of the range, and look at the knobs. What’s missing? If you answered, “Any kind of ANYTHING that would indicate what any of them do,” you’d be right. Well, obviously the four on the right control the range, but it took some trial and error for us to figure out which way meant hot and which meant cold. (If anyone living in Gamli in the future somehow stumbles across this blog—the answer is the 10:00 position is the coolest; 2:00 is the hottest. You’re welcome.) And obviously, the second from the left controls the temperature of the oven, but again, you’ll notice the distinct lack of any markings. When I bake something, I just turn the knob to the middle and check it every five or ten minutes to see how it’s doing. So far, that’s worked out reasonably well. Then there’s the enigma of the far left button. We still don’t completely understand that one. You have to turn it to something in order to heat the oven, but what any of those somethings are is a mystery. The best part of all this is the grease-stained cheat sheet left to us by some previous occupant of the Gamli basement:

“No Guaranty” is right. The original work was in pencil, and someone this semester did some corrections in pen, but it still doesn’t help much. As you can see, the original person got the range knobs wrong, and lord knows what the temperatures of the oven really are. Aaand, we still don't know what those symbols on the left knob are supposed to mean.