Lost Subject #3: When Applicances Attack!

So yeah, the whole point of these “Lost Posts” was that I’d get caught up and I could go back to posting the small stuff, but once again I got distracted with work and stuff. So anyway…

I’ve only owned my house for three years now. I’ve been living in it for seven or eight, though. When I bought it from the ex-landlord I also bought the appliances as well, because they already had appliances in the other house where they were moving. The refrigerator was relatively new, but the oven/stove/microwave combo, the dishwasher, the washer and dryer were all as old as the house, which is about 22-23 years now. A few years ago, the microwave “died.” And by “died” I mean I spent $50 for a service call to determine that it would cost another $200 to replace a $.50 piece of plastic in the door latch that lets the microwave know the door is closed and can therefore turn on. (A $200 I opted not to pay.)

So I was due for another appliance dying. I should have suspected something was amiss when the dryer started taking longer and longer to dry a load, even when cleaning the lint filter. So, sure enough, halfway through a load of my laundry, the dryer died. I ended up having to air-dry that load and we couldn’t do any more loads; this was a pressing issue. I realized that when replacing the dryer I should probably replace the washer as well, for aesthetic reasons, because the washer’s probably not going to last much longer, and because Sears was having a deal where one major appliance was 10% off, two were 15% off and three were 20% off. (Although I was tempted, I opted not to replace, oh, the dishwasher for the extra 5%.)

So to Sears we went. Jenny was there because she’s one of those people who just has to be around when people do shopping for big items, I guess. And Hung was around because we made a dinner trip out of it. I found the dryer I wanted after not too long, but was torn between its matching brother (or sister, I’m not quite sure of the gender of appliances) and a cheaper, non-matching, not quite the same height so it wouldn’t line up other model. The matching model happened to be a front-loading high-efficiency washer, which came with two additional rebates, one from the power company and one from the water company. So it ended up not being too much more and the decision was made.

Two days later:

Shiny. They’re all high-tech and junk and the washer is so amazingly quiet, except for the spin cycle where it spins crazy-fast.