Blender Fail

Yesterday, I was making myself some broccoli soup.  My extremely complex recipe calls for the following:

One small saucepan with chicken broth.  Add 1/2 head of broccoli (chopped up).  Simmer until soft.  Then blend up with an immersible blender. Add a little milk and maybe some spices.  Eat.

But yesterday, I decided to get advanced.

I poured the broccoli/broth/milk mixture into the blender.
[You can see this coming, can't you?]
I remembered that you're supposed to open the little circular top liddy thing when blending hot ingredients, so I removed it.

BLEND!
DANG!  I didn't cover up the little circular hole.  BROCCOLI EVERYWHERE.  And it was HOT.  I thought to myself, "Dang.  Shoulda seen that coming."

So, naturally, I put the little circle lid thing back on. 
And then BLEND!
DANG!
This time, the broccoli soup blew the whole TOP off the blender.  More broccoli soup EVERYWHERE.
I did a mental facepalm, and wondered what to do next.  The broccoli was still not really pureed.  So I again removed the little circle thingy, but this time tossed a kitchen towel over the hole.

BLEND!
DANNNG!
It blew the towel off, but this time the broccoli puree was contained to a degree. 

At this point, I gave up.  I poured what was left of the soup into a bowl and just pretended like none of it had ever happened.

Sigh.