Update: I didn't plan on going out today because I thought I had to stay home to shovel the snow, but there wasn't any, which brought up a sticky situation where I asked My Father if he wanted me to stay home and shovel when there wasn't any snow at all, not even the two inches we were supposed to get.  No hectoring accusations about, "How can you not know it's not snowing out?  You're asleep at 1 in the afternoon, aren't you?!?!?!" stemming from my mistake from him tonight, thank dog.

And so I asked My Father if he wanted me to buy the microwave today.  He said yes.  I then made a mental note to try out the old microwave, partly to see for myself if it works, partly for one last spin with the good ol' machine.  Maybe it's a power surge that temporarily rendered the microwave inoperable.  Because My Father wanted me to order pizza for dinner tonight, I made sure I got home early, which would give me time to, say, put some water in my cup and put it in the microwave to see if it'll get hot.  If it didn't -- well, I'd sure miss the poor guy, but I would know for sure it would need to be replaced.

So I get home a little before 5 ... and because I didn't get around to working on my article at the coffeeshop, I worked on that (well, inbetween Internet surfing) in my bedroom.  Only when I saw My Father start to move the new microwave to where the old one was did I remember that I forgot to see for myself whether the old nuker worked.

It probably still wouldn't.  Yesterday I took out a plate of vegetable stew Mother tried to warm up in there; the plate I was holding was at room temperature and I felt no heat coming from the stew.  But as the old machine lies in my parents' minivan, upside-down, I don't know for sure.  And I feel guilty that I forgot, after I promised myself to see the truth with my own eyes.