Major Appliances--Major Headache

The latest Bleat reminded me of our last appliance delivery/nightmare. When I was in Canada earlier this year on a business trip, the washing machine broke. My wife had noticed that the clothes were coming out "really wet, and it was taking forever to dry them". It is a front-loader and the drum was not rotating at all, which would account for the wetness. We still cannot account for the clothes not being soapy or still dirty as well as wet. A quick check revealed that the belt was fine and it was the motor which was shot. Normally, I would at least price-out the cost of a new motor, but this machine had been throwing about a quart of water out the bottom per load for the last two years. Yes, I had tried to figure out where the water was coming from and had found that it was coming from the tank itself. I was somewhat shocked to find that the tank was plastic when the drum was expensive and shiny stainless steel. In any account, the leakage wasn't much of a problem since it just seeped through the laundry room floor and dripped into the unfinished basement floor, where it would eventually evaporate. So, the day I got back from Canada (I came in on a redeye and arrived at Logan around 7:00AM) I went to Sear's and purchased a fancy machine. It was a floor model, which saved some money and ensured quicker delivery. I payed to have them install the new machine and cart-off the old one. What they ended up doing was leaving the new machine in our living room and leaving the old machine right where it was. It seems that they could not turn off the water faucet valve which feeds cold water to the machines and so gave up and left it as is. As you might suppose, I was not at home when this 'delivery' took place. I guess high tech options like kinking the hose while making the transfer or just shutting off the house water were too high-tech to be viable options. It all worked out for the best and I will explain how, later--gotta go to work now. Later: It worked out for the best because the rubber feet of the machine were totally wrecked. I suspect they slid-around the floor model from time to time and wore off the rubber. Since I had the old machine still there, I took it's legs off and luckily they fit onto the new washer. I imagine it would have been a total hassle to have got Sears to replace the feet and it really was very little effort to make the swap. dbp

Some Birthday Party Videos

Somehow, I think that if we had sons instead of daughters; the kids at the party would have mumbled their way through a version of "Happy Birthday" and that would have been the full extent of the singing. dbp

Surenna's Birthday Party at the Acton Bowladrome

We all had some fun doing candlepin bowling. It is a New England style and is slightly different from 'normal' bowling. The pins and balls are different (smaller) and even though you get three rolls per frame, there has never been a perfect (300) game bowled. dbp