Things that don't happen every day

Um... there's an issue going on right now.

No, make that two. Well one is already done with... here I'll use my friendly lists:

1. I was cooking today and wanted to add ginger to my cooking. My ginger shrunk. 
2. Our laundry machine spewed out a candy cane

Story 1: Case of the shrinking ginger

This story isn't so strange. Basically I cut my ginger a while ago and put it in a cabinet. My parents do this very often and the ginger usually only shrinks a bit at the cut area. Not so for me. My ginger turned into a misformed twig:

I found this quite amusing. Actually I showed my roommate and we started laughing; right now I'm not sure what the humour was though. This ginger actually looks very sad.

Story 2: Case of the Magical Candy Cane Creation Factory that is our Laundry Machine

So starting the beginning this week, my roommate was doing her laundry. She then reported to me that during the last 5min of the cycle (the spin cycle), the machine started making really loud and scary noises. On instinct, she removed her clothes and noticed a very strange burnt plastic/chemical smell. 

Today she tried again, with hopes that it was a one time phenomenon. Again, the last 5min consisted of strange and otherworldly noises. And again, the pungent odour was noticed.

So roughly 2 hours ago I decided that I needed to wash my clothes. And so I thought, hey I'll just set the machine to not do the spin cycle, that way it'll never reach the point of the strange noises. Naive thinking.

Midway through the wash cycle some heavy bangs were heard from the machine. Roommate has confirmed that it was not the same noise she heard but we thought we ought to check it out just in case. So we looked and noticed there was a strange piece of plastic among my clothes. We opened the doors and beheld:

Yes. It's a candy cane. Crushed and such but still a candy cane. The mystery is where this candy cane came from since neither my roommate nor I have had such a candy cane before. In fact, the box of 100 candy canes I bought for Christmas looks absolutely nothing like this (mine have a green stripe as well and the packaging has words). 

So we figure, ok, now we know why the laundry was making weird sounds. Let the washing cycle continue. BAD IDEA

Somehow, the laundry froze during the middle of the rinsing stage. It also didn't drain. And since there's water inside it the door is locked. My clothes are in there. 

Roommate just called the company who made the washer (LG...), they said we need to reset the machine. I'm studying for an upcoming test and so lovely roomie has offered to take care of it. I've already planned out backup clothes anyways so I'm not too worried. I would like to have the machine door opened at some point though... 

Random things happen it seems. It's been such an entertaining night I've laughed myself silly. Back to work now.