To Heat or Not to Heat

 

I woke up Wed feeling like I could breathe a sigh of relief…the elections were over.  I didn’t care who won or lost; I merely wanted my beloved GEICO Gecko commercials back.  Naturally, I assumed my day would begin with coffee and a session w/friends on Twitter.

Never assume.  You see…when I awoke I realized it was rather chilly in the house – it was so cold even EmmaLou, Golden Destroyer, was snuggled up close to me for warmth.  That’s cold.

I threw on sweats over my jammies and stumbled downstairs to look at the thermostat on our almost brand new furnace.  It read 59 degrees.  It should have read 64 degrees.  I fiddled with the thermostat, then went to make coffee knowing full well I would figure this out if I had some java hit my brain cells.

Java hitting my brain cells was no help whatsoever. When I returned to the thermostat the temp had lowered to 57.  This was not good.  It was 6 a.m. and I wanted some heat.  No matter what I tried, I could not get the furnace to kick in.  So I stuck my hands in my coffee to unfreeze my fingers and off to the basement EmmaLou and I went to scream at the Furnace from Hades.

Guess what I found?  Oodles and oodles of water all over the floor.  There was so much water in that basement I half imagined Noah would peek around the corner holding a piece of gopher wood in his hand.  And… yes…  I freaked.  I got closer to the furnace and saw that there was an active stream of water flowing down the furnace, into the furnace, and out of the furnace – all at the same time,  but I was too freaked to locate the source.  It was fight or flight time and I chose flight.

Back upstairs EmmaLou and I went.  She to curl up on the family room couch and lick the water from her paws; me to the phone to call the furnace maven and leave a frantic message. 

Did I mention this is a new furnace … as in 2009-new?  Did I mention this is not the first time I have had it come to a full stop and do its impression of a 90-year old with a full bladder and no Depends in sight?  Ack. 

I had a full day planned – a meeting w/my pastor, prep work for my small group, and some retail therapy.  I had no time for this nonsense.  BTW, throughout all the up-the-stairs-down-the-stairs-muttering-the-bad-words-under-the-breath and the frantic phone call, Devoted Spouse blissfully slept tucked in under his favorite blankie.  gah…

Turns out it was the intake hose for the humidifier and it had a 3-inch tear in it.  Piece of plastic crapola…the nice Repair Dude replaced all the plastic hoses with copper tubing so this never happens again.  In the meantime, water had also gotten into the furnace causing it to short out and necessitating a new control board.  I continued to freak.  Was this covered under warranty?  Would our home insurance cover it if the appliance people didn’t?  Was I going to get breakfast?

As usual, I was in panic mode for no good reason.  Yes the floor got wet – okay it got very wet and water seeped under the sheetrock on one wall and the trim so I’m a tad concerned about that.  But the good news is Repair Dude tore out the plastic hosing, replaced with copper, and figured out how to get the new control panel to work (the inside was wet and it kept shorting out so he blew on it to dry it out…yes I said he blew on it to dry it out…making me wonder in what Chapter of the Repair Dude Handbook he learned that trick).

Voila – heat.  Yes, I know appliances and I don’t live well together.  They don’t like me and I have no respect for them and I don’t expect this to change any time in the future…did I mention we need  a new hot water heater? … sigh

Vacuum Seal Your Way to Healthy Eating…or But Wait, There’s More!

There was an interesting article a few days ago about the latest culinary gadget.  I’m all about culinary gadgets — I have a kitchen full of them – most unused.  I have mandolines (at least 3), I have steamers, I have several crockpots, I have two separate sets of dry ingredient measuring cups; one of which is missing the 1/3 cup (how do you lose something like that?), there are at least 3 different types of cooking pots and pans; some from Pampered Chef (really quite good), some from Le Creuset (oooh la la love them but they are sooooooo heavy) and a few other odds and ends.  We’re not even gonna discuss the tons of Tupperware lurking in my kitchen.  I have choppers, dicers, slicers, the massive Kitchen Aid mixer and a hand mixer.  I own various cutting and carving implements and an excellent (and very sharp) set of Henckel knives (with which I frequently lose parts of various digits to which my 11 faithful readers can attest - ow). 

But I don’t have something with which I can prepare my dishes “sous-vide” which is a French cooking term for cooking vacuum packed food in a water bath at precisely controlled low temperatures.  I hear if it is done correctly the food is amazingly good with all the yummy flavors sealed in.  AND here’s the wonderful part – you can actually purchase this cooking implement from a company called Sur La Table (they’re a little pricey but have neat catalogs) for only $449.95. 

Well crap on toast,  I gotta get me one of them.  So far, I’ve just been taking the little prepared frozen steamer bags of food and popping them in the microwave.  Certainly this “le machine” will do a better job.  On the other hand,  I once invested in that other  machine (I think it was called something like Food Sealer?) that vacuum seals your food so you can store it all in the freezer until the next nuclear war and it will still be edible.  I found it was more trouble than it was worth and one day I noticed I had not just sealed my steak in the pack; I had also included the knife – ya gotta pay close attention to this machine - it just vacuum seals everything.  Heck I got mad at EmmaLou, Golden Destroyer after she had just torn apart yet another couch cushion and I found myself looking from her to the vacuum sealer and back to her again, but luckily for her there wasn’t enough plastic in the world to fit around her so she lived to see another day. 

The issue I have with this new sealing device (aside from the obviously ludicrous price)  is you take the package out of the freezer, pop it in boiling water and who knows when it’s done?  You don’t know until you open it up and then if it’s not finished cooking you have to pour the water out of the pot and pour the partially cooked food into the pot and start all over.  It’s not like you can poke it with a fork and see if it’s tender coz then you break the seal and then you have a big plastic bag in a pot of boiling water with food oozing out.  Gah…

I think I’ll skip this latest invention – Devoted Spouse thinks I live in a vacuum anyway…  sigh…

The Fun Just Keeps Coming

I have mentioned once or a thousand times during the course of this year about my issues with home appliances.  It seems as if every time I turn around something else decides to die a horrible electrical death.  Recently the refrigerator bled out (oh it was only water) all over the kitchen and into the dining room (I hate GE Profile so much).  Prior to that the oven had given up and we were reduced to using the microwave (which wasn’t bad really). At the time I had an injured shoulder and couldn’t pick up anything to get it into an oven anyway.  The air conditioning went out during a very hot spell (naturally) and to get the best deal and the energy tax rebates we went ahead and replaced the furnace (it was a disaster waiting to happen anyway).  Today I actually made the final payment on the furnace/air conditioning.

I was feeling so good about not having that high amount of debt for the furnace/ air conditioning hanging over my head that to celebrate (I know, I’m strange)  I decided to help Devoted Spouse by taking my turn at doing a few loads of laundry.  He was busy with other home maintenance issues and I didn’t want to bother him.  I can get the laundry baskets bounced down two flights of stairs without spilling much more than an errant washcloth and errant washcloths are a favorite of EmmaLou so everyone is happy.

After 3 loads of laundry and the associated trips up and down two flights of stairs, I was really feeling my oats, so to speak.  I got a little too excited – laundry-wise – and decided it was time to wash the coverlet off our bed.  Now this is not a heavy comforter, just a lightweight cover, but it is somewhat large.   Went through the wash cycle with no problem.  Went through the dry cycle with no problem… sort of.

I went down to the basement to check on whether or not the coverlet was dry and at the foot of the stairs I smelled something burning.  Oh crap – I’ve smelled that aroma before — it’s a burned out motor and it had to be coming from either the washer or dryer.  Crap, crap, crap.  I got to the laundry area and the washer was just humming along doing its thing happily unaware that right next to it, its mate was dying a horrible slow death.  I unplugged the dryer and called to Devoted Spouse.

He came downstairs with appropriate dryer tools in hand.  He pulled the dryer away from the wall, took off some of the back panels, rummaged around a bit, and the smell was still that of burning machinery.  I decided then and there I didn’t want him to try and fix it – it needed a decent burial; it was 12 years old and had fought the good fight.

So off to the Big Orange Box of Toys (Home Depot) we went and being the smart consumer I am, I did a pre-emptive strike and bought not just a dryer but its matching washer, too.  These aren’t the big hummers you see advertised on tv — we don’t generate that much laundry, and frankly I don’t need a steam function on my dryer.  That’s why God made Dry Cleaners.  But they still run about $800 each.  Crap.  There goes that Mac I wanted to buy.

What irks me is while these are high energy machines, we don’t qualify for the tax credit because the state of Ohio is just now dickering around with the paperwork with the Federal Government to figure out how to go about this process.  So we get the energy benefits, but no tax credits.  Grrrr…stupid bureaucracy.

So, let’s tally this up for 2009 – a new furnace, new air conditioning, a new water softener, a new stove/oven, new refrigerator, new washer, and a new dryer (we bought a new dishwasher in late 2008 so that doesn’t qualify even though it was pricey).  All told, almost $12,000.  That’s alot of money for one year.  But the good news is I won’t have to put out that kind of dough again for a long time hopefully.

On the other hand, there is a hot water heater lurking in the basement and I can hear it whispering and plotting…it’s up to no good…I just know one of these days I will wake up to cold water coming from the bathroom shower and a flooded basement and realize I should have replaced that water heater the day before…sigh…

Appliances…can’t live without ‘em…can’t find a trebuchet large enough to fling them where the sun don’t shine…

Friday Free For All

This is my Friday free for all posting  or what I like to call my posting mish mash – I’m going to ramble for awhile and make no real sense at all.  So just enjoy the fact that you can read this and feel superior to me in your capacity to think and act as a rational normal functioning adult human being (probably).

For those of you who are employed, Yippee Skippee it’s Friday and it’s a holiday weekend.  For my friend, Chris, Yippee Skippee, he’s on leave Friday and then goes on vacation for 2 weeks.  For the rest of us slobs – retired, unemployed, or whatever the alternate choice may be, it’s just another day in Paradise.

For me, it’s going to be a day of mostly studying with the exception of a quick run to Omaha Steaks because they had a special one-day-only 50% off sale on Wed and the nice manager told me since my refrigerator died, he would honor my coupon on Fri.  Note to world:  Omaha Steaks rocks – I will NEVER buy a steak from a grocery store again.  Truly.   Back to school — while I received an A my first week of class, and in the middle of my second week, I received an email from my Professor telling me he was impressed with my homework submission and that I was doing excellent work, I’m falling behind in my reading and I haven’t even started working on my source material for my research paper (which is due in Week 7 and that’s just right around the corner).

I’m behind because of the nightmare of the broken refrigerator.  Now, I’ve twittered about it, I’ve written about it on my other Blog (shameless plug) and of course, I posted a note on this blog.  But, it’s amazing to me how totally upside down your world can become when a major appliance decides to commit hari-kari in the middle of the night, especially when this appliance is hooked up to a water line and decides to “pee” everywhere.  Thank goodness I already take blood pressure medicine, or I probably would have reached stroke level by now.  The new refrigerator is in; it’s very nice and I’m happy with it, even if it is taking some getting used to since it’s so different from the type of refrigerator I had before.

Speaking of things breaking…well more like breaking down, as in holey moley Batman, when did I get so flippin’ old?  Devoted Spouse and I were watching Discovery Science the other night and they were talking about gravity.  Plus they were discussing colonizing Mars.  I said, “If we lived on Mars at least my tits would point up.”  Devoted Spouse thought that was really funny but I was serious.  Somewhere between just the other day and today gravity has just wreaked havoc on my body. Each picture of me lately shows either this tremendous turkey neck or 37 chins.  I toyed with the idea of duct taping my neck so it would tighten the skin, but then I’d have to do an amazing job of getting my hair to cover it and there’s that pesky problem of getting the duct tape back off my skin (ouch), so I put that idea in the “don’t try” category.  That’s why I pose with something in front of my neck usually — like a book, a flower, or the dog even.    Almost overnight I have become a perfect candidate for that commercial on tv for the Lifestyle Lift – the one where women my age who look like they’re 127 have some type of procedure done on their jowls (I hate that word; it sounds like the pieces parts you cut off chickens before you cook them) and neck and suddenly look twenty years younger.  As much as I hate the thought of any type of plastic surgery, I want that procedure.  I want it now.  With my luck, the doctor will sneeze, and I’ll end up looking like the Joker.  You know my life – one Murphy’s Law day after another.

My best girlfriend is twenty years older than me (and I thought I was old – LOL).  I used to look at the skin on her arms and think, “Am I ever glad MY arms don’t look like that!”  Well, guess what?  Crapola, now they do – it’s as if suddenly God reached down and pushed my arms together to make the skin wrinkly and it’s really starting to get on my last nerve.  And then there’s the issue with my back  and leg not healing like I thought they would and being in pain and limping and running out of physical therapy appointments next week!  It just sucks.  I broke down the other day and used a cane because it just hurt too much to walk without its support.  That was the day I realized I was my grandmother and I was five minutes away from living in one of those weirdly-flowered house dresses.  Gah…

But it beats the alternative and I’m truly grateful every day I wake up on the right side of the grass.  So what if my boobies are sort of falling down – they’re just in a race to match my butt which is also lowering for some reason.  Life means looking like you are in your mid-50′s on the outside while feeling like you’re in your mid-twenties on the inside.  (Yes I know celebrities like Susan Lucci are in their 60′s and look like 20, but they’ve been carved more times than a  Thanksgiving Turkey.)   Cruel, but true.   Basically, I just need to grow about 3 inches in length and everything would even out again.  I’ll keep blowing out birthday candles (and yes, we always keep the fire extinguisher handy) and wishing for my youth to return, but it will never happen.  I’m told, wisdom takes its place.  I haven’t found that either – - maybe I’ll find it when I get to Mars and get my tits pointing in the right direction.  You’ll be the first to know, trust me.