Big Machines Bite the Dust
On the domestic front, we've been running through machines around here pretty quickly.
Sam's car doesn't start all the time -- I mean, you know, it starts most of the time, but not all the time. It's not the most dependable thing. We like to run our cars into the ground before we replace them, but though this one's not actually having to look up to see down, it's close. So Sam's looking for a used Subaru wagon. To match mine.
Then, last weekend, I went to run a bath for the child and discovered that there was no hot water. Turned out this was because the hot water heater was broken. For a while we were all pumped cause Sam remembered that the last time the hot water gave out was when his niece Deborah was in the shower, and she was a teenager then, so that made the current water heater about 30 years old, and we were justly proud of having REALLY run the water heater into the ground. But the guy who came to install the new one remembered Sam -- I gather that there's something about the experience of dragging giant machines down the broken steps in our back yard that makes a big impression on visitors -- and he'd installed it in about 1990. So. Not as old as we'd thought. Still. That was nice, those few days when we thought we'd run a water heater for 30 years.
Then a few days ago the TV, which has been coughing up less and less attractive pictures, started reducing the picture to a single horizontal line across the middle of its face. I was doing pretty well using it as a radio -- and really, it wasn't that much different from the experience of watching our beloved noir TV shows -- CSI, CSI Miami, Law and Order I, Law and Order II, Law and Order III, Forensic Files, Cold Case Files (no pattern here, no) -- since all those shows are mostly filmed in the dark, we haven't been able to discern pictures in them for quite some time now (TV night sounds like this -- what's happening? I can't tell. Are they in the bedroom? I don't think so. I think they went outside. Is that blood? I guess so; that other guy mentioned blood. Wait a minute. Who's that? Who's who? That guy there. On the edge of the screen. What?). But Sam went and got some big ol' monster thing --24" screen! we are living high! -- and now we can see EVERYTHING! YAY! I cannot tell you how much more entrancing Dexter's Laboratory is when you can actually see all the colors in it.
Then yesterday, I had to leave the King Cake in the oven and go off to a doctor's appointment, leaving Sam to take the King Cake out of the oven when the timer went off, which he did, and so now the King Cake's WAY overcooked, and though it is edible, it's not got the flaky goodness it should be having, on account of being Tough.
The problem is that the oven is too hot, and you never know what temperature it's going to be, and it's now hotter than it used to be, so my compensations don't actually compensate. Other things are wrong with it too -- indeed, Sam says that it was only AFTER they'd bought the stove that he looked it up in Consumer Reports and discovered that it was the lowest rated stove on the market.
Well. It messed up my King Cake. And now we're sort of on a roll. So I'm looking for a new stove.
Let's see. What else around here is about to go? Hmmm...maybe I could use a new breadmaker...
Sam's car doesn't start all the time -- I mean, you know, it starts most of the time, but not all the time. It's not the most dependable thing. We like to run our cars into the ground before we replace them, but though this one's not actually having to look up to see down, it's close. So Sam's looking for a used Subaru wagon. To match mine.
Then, last weekend, I went to run a bath for the child and discovered that there was no hot water. Turned out this was because the hot water heater was broken. For a while we were all pumped cause Sam remembered that the last time the hot water gave out was when his niece Deborah was in the shower, and she was a teenager then, so that made the current water heater about 30 years old, and we were justly proud of having REALLY run the water heater into the ground. But the guy who came to install the new one remembered Sam -- I gather that there's something about the experience of dragging giant machines down the broken steps in our back yard that makes a big impression on visitors -- and he'd installed it in about 1990. So. Not as old as we'd thought. Still. That was nice, those few days when we thought we'd run a water heater for 30 years.
Then a few days ago the TV, which has been coughing up less and less attractive pictures, started reducing the picture to a single horizontal line across the middle of its face. I was doing pretty well using it as a radio -- and really, it wasn't that much different from the experience of watching our beloved noir TV shows -- CSI, CSI Miami, Law and Order I, Law and Order II, Law and Order III, Forensic Files, Cold Case Files (no pattern here, no) -- since all those shows are mostly filmed in the dark, we haven't been able to discern pictures in them for quite some time now (TV night sounds like this -- what's happening? I can't tell. Are they in the bedroom? I don't think so. I think they went outside. Is that blood? I guess so; that other guy mentioned blood. Wait a minute. Who's that? Who's who? That guy there. On the edge of the screen. What?). But Sam went and got some big ol' monster thing --24" screen! we are living high! -- and now we can see EVERYTHING! YAY! I cannot tell you how much more entrancing Dexter's Laboratory is when you can actually see all the colors in it.
Then yesterday, I had to leave the King Cake in the oven and go off to a doctor's appointment, leaving Sam to take the King Cake out of the oven when the timer went off, which he did, and so now the King Cake's WAY overcooked, and though it is edible, it's not got the flaky goodness it should be having, on account of being Tough.
The problem is that the oven is too hot, and you never know what temperature it's going to be, and it's now hotter than it used to be, so my compensations don't actually compensate. Other things are wrong with it too -- indeed, Sam says that it was only AFTER they'd bought the stove that he looked it up in Consumer Reports and discovered that it was the lowest rated stove on the market.
Well. It messed up my King Cake. And now we're sort of on a roll. So I'm looking for a new stove.
Let's see. What else around here is about to go? Hmmm...maybe I could use a new breadmaker...
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