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Appliances

Ironing weirdness, Costco, and $$$$

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Good grief…i think i just saved myself a nice little wad of cash by NOT (i hope) buying a new iron. Maybe.

So last night I’m pressing the Costco Blue Jeans Collection when I notice this faint, tingly bzzzzzzt sensation as my fingers rub lightly against the inside of the iron’s handle.

Hmmm…WTF is that? Feels like ’lectricity…

Dork around a bit, test this, test that, thinking it’s gotta be my imagination.

No. Apparently not. Unplug the iron: no bzzzzt sensation.

So I figure the beloved Shark iron, which I’ve had so long the paint has rubbed off parts of the handle, is giving up the ghost and wants to take me along when it moves on to the Next World. Decide I’ll either order another one from Amazon in the morning or run up to the Target, which is where this one came from.

Examine the offerings at Amazon.

Holy shit! Have you looked at the price of irons lately? Check this thing out ! What do they think it’s made of? A hundred and twelve bucks, marked down from TWO HUNDRED BUCKS, for a freaking steam iron?

I had a Rowenta at one point, back in the day when I had a job and could afford to spend too much on stuff like this. They are very expensive irons, and they’re not worth the extra money. On mine, the cord attached at a strange angle so that you could not set it down on its heel on the ironing board while you adjusted the position of the rag you were pressing. From the looks of this one, it appears they haven’t fixed that design flaw.

Replaced it with a Sunbeam, which was cheap and functioned like a two-dollar cookstove: it got so damn hot I couldn’t hold onto the handle. Out with that.

Had a Black & Decker at one point. Don’t recall what was wrong with that, but I didn’t like it, either. I think it crapped out early on.

Then I got a Shark, and I’ve really loved it. It gets hot quickly, it steams efficiently, it does the job, it does not singe your hands. The only complaint I have is the God DAMNED automatic shut-off, which turns the thing off every time you leave the room to go to the toilet or pour yourself a cup of coffee. That, however, is apparently Big Brother’s doing, not the manufacturer’s.

But evidently the quality of Shark steam irons has collapsed. Even the ones with five stars at Amazon are roundly hated by upwards of 25% of buyers. So…that is not a good thing.

Tried to track down irons made in the USA. Couldn’t find a trace of ary a one. Searched for irons made in Germany: yeah, Rowenta. Moving on.

The only iron available at Costco goes for an astonishing $130. For an iron????? What do they think it’s made of?

That’s cheaper than the identical model at Amazon, where it goes for an eye-opening $150.

Apparently all affordable irons — by that we mean those in the $30 to $50 range — are now made in China. Thank you very much, honored leaders and globalization enthusiasts.

So I figured I’d drive up to the Fry’s market on the fringe of Richistan, whose offerings in the small household appliance dept rival or exceed Target’s and whose location does not require me to dodge bums and purse-snatchers between the car and the entrance.

{cringe!}

I do not want to go out. I’ve got a lot of other things to do today. The prospect of driving across the city is never pleasurable, and having to put a lot of other chores in abeyance to run out and shop for a steam iron is…well…UGH.

So before getting washed up to go charging out into the traffic, I decided to plug that iron into a different outlet. Could it be possible that the issue had something to do with the power strip? (Not bloody likely…but I’ve got nothin’ better to do…) Schlep into the bathroom, stick its plug into an outlet, and turn it to Blowtorch.

Hm. No bzzzt effect.

But it has no water in its tank.

Pour in a cupful of water. Turn it back on to Blowtorch.

Nothing. No indication whatsoever that the thing is getting ready to electrocute me.

So. I don’t know what caused that. The jeans I was pressing were sopping wet — fresh out of the washer. Some time back, I learned you can iron jeans while they’re soaking wet, hang them up damp, and have them come out looking the same as if you waited until they were dry to iron them. Maybe ironing soaking wet fabric with an electric appliance is ill-advised?

WhatEVER. I’ll try ironing the other three pair of (dry) jeans that await my attention, and if the thing doesn’t threaten to electrocute me, it goes back into its accustomed place in the linen closet. Thank goodness.

Can you believe that price on the only iron available at Costco?

Lately, I’ve found myself patronizing Costco a great deal less than normal. And I’ve also found that I seem to be spending a lot less than I usually do during the course of a month.

True, the refrigerator is pretty much bare (makes it easier to clean the thing…). But I’m not out of food: there’s plenty of meat, fish, chicken, and veggies to sustain me and the pooches.

The problem with Costco is that it’s Impulse Buy Hell. No matter how determined I am to stick to a shopping list, I can not get out of that place without buying something I hadn’t planned on buying. And that ratchets up the spending fast.

Without benefit of Costco, I’ve only charged up $243 on the Visa card; only $640 on AMEX.

Before Costco dumped AMEX, about $1200 was typical. So the Visa bill is showing, effectively, nothing but Costco charges. The only non-Costco charge this month was a bag of expensive organic zooom-bah dog food. So that’s a total of $880 in household shopping costs for November. So…about $400 less than usual. Hmmm…

So I think it’s a good idea to restrict trips to Costco: go there to buy only those things you can’t easily get somewhere else.

  1. The lifetime supplies of paper goods are beyond convenient.
  2. The bags of pecans: you can’t get fresher pecans this side of the tree itself.
  3. The incredibly cheap boned chicken legs, with which to make dog food.
  4. The pricey but outrageously convenient bags of frozen fish steaks.
  5. The bottomless bag of chocolate chips.
  6. The giant bag of mixed veggies, with which to make dog food.
  7. The flats of apples, priced within reason.
  8. The boxes of berries.
  9. And of course, the Costco jeans!

When you come right down to it, though…that ain’t much. Just about everything else can be purchased in regular grocery stores.

Problem with the lifetime supplies is that by definition, one such purchase should last you for a long, long time. But you find yourself buying lifetime supplies every time you go into the place. And if you go in there four times during a month, as I did in October, then you buy enough stuff to last four lifetimes.

$aved!! Thank You, Beloved Di$hwa$her

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So after its human managed to line up a service call ($130 + $25/every 15 minutes) to address its loud noise, the famous Bosch dishwasher has STOPPED MAKING THE NOISE!

Just in the nick of time, too. Once again, the thing is so quiet you wonder if it’s working at all.

Last night after I’d run the washer on three days’ worth of dishes, I thought…tha’s funny…i don’t recall hearing The Noise. But then figured I must not have been paying attention.

So decided that this morning, what with Charley’s dog dish (huge) to wash and a frying pan that could go in there, I should run the machine first thing off the bat, just to see WTF.

And lo! It really isn’t making The Noise. It has a little buzz in one of the cycles near the start. But it’s a very quiet little buzz, nothing like the Growl That Was the Noise.

So: grab the phone, call the repair outfit, cancel the $155 service call.

Whew! Thank the heavens.

I figure something must have gotten caught in its garbage disposal grinder or some such. I did clean the drain filter, but that shouldn’t have made much difference: it was pretty clean to start with, and I doubt that a dishwasher cycle starts with draining a tub of water. There certainly wasn’t anything in there.

The plumber has ordered me not to put so much as a drop of grease or oil down the drain: in any form…”even spaghetti sauce has grease in it!” quoth he.

Well, that’s easier said than done: how do you wash dishes without some grease going down the drain?

So I’ve taken to wiping the dishes off carefully with paper towels (yes, I know: ecologically unfriendly!) to get as much grease and food particles off before putting them in the washer. This means that the washer’s internal garbage grinder is not getting what we’d call a lot of strain put on it. There really shouldn’t be anything in there that could have jammed it.

Anything’s possible, though. Come to think of it, some months ago a wine glass broke inside the washer and pieces of glass fell to the bottom. I suppose I could have missed picking up a piece (though I did take the shop vac to it). Maybe it shook loose and went on down to the sewer when I took the innards apart to clean the filter.

WhatEVER. Thank goodness I don’t have to blow another couple hundred bucks on getting that thing repaired, on top of all the other repairs and maintenance that have been draining the checkbook.

Hey, Mr. Dishwasher Repairman, Play a Song for Me…

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And sing me HOW MUCH you want to work on the washer? Dude!?!

No kidding. This morning the Bosch CSR reported that to come over and check on the weird, LOUD noise their supposedly whisper-silent dishwasher is emitting, they will charge $130 to show up at the door and $30 per 15 minutes of service call time.

I say…uhhmmmmm….. so, you’re saying that if the guy says something’s so wrong with it that it can’t be repaired, you’re going to charge me $160 to tell me the thing is kaput?

Tha’s right, sez she.

Dare I say it?

Yes, I dare: Holeeeee Sh!t

This happened after I called a beloved and trusted repairdude, who said he couldn’t work on Bosch because Bosch has locked up the market by making it impossible to buy parts. So I had to call the phone number Bosch emblazons on its equipment to get one of their repairdudes over here.

Okay. But…..

Said pronouncement was rendered suspect by Bosch’s Annoying Phone Tree, which said, first, “Press 1 for service” and then second, “Press 2 to order parts.”

This registered after I’d talked to their platinum-plated CSR: waaaitaminit….. If you can’t buy parts anymore, howcum their Annoying Phone Tree offers to sell you parts?

After hearing the exorbitant preliminary estimate and after thinking about that for a minute, I called B&B Appliances (my new go-to appliance retailer) and asked if they knew anyone who could work on Bosch appliances. Noooooo prob’, said they, and they emitted the name of a local outfit.

Called. They seemed to have no problem working on Bosch machinery…that’s because they’re an official Bosch repairdude company.

That notwithstanding, the cost of their service cost was significantly lower (though still way too high), and the cost of their hang-around-your-house efforts was lower. Somewhat.

It’s still going to cost a stupid amount of money to find out why turning on the dishwasher awakens an enraged Tyrannosaurus rex. However, I figure it’s better to get it fixed now, rather than waiting till it breaks down, and then having to wait half a week or more until they can get someone over here to tell me it’s broken.

What we need here is to persuade Speed Queen to start making dishwashers…

Emptying Out the Nest

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nest thermostatSometimes I feel like I’m swimming backwards: searching for retrograde items to replace commonplace tools that were once so functional  you barely noticed they were there but that have been replaced with computerized junk so complicated you can’t even begin to figure out how to make it work — or even if it does work. Current case in point: the Nest.

My son kindly bought me one of these formerly extremely kewl thermostats as a birthday present. And at the time it was awesomely kewl, the product of a band of ambitious young Turks. You could tell it what time you wanted to jack up or down the house’s temperature; or you could tell it to watch for you and to turn off when you’re not around. So, say, you could set it for 80 degrees on a 110-degree day, and it would keep the temperature around there while you were in the house, but if you went out for a few hours, it would shut itself off until you came back, saving you large amounts of money.

Then Google bought Nest.

Yeah.

thermostat honeywellWell, even if you didn’t mind the presumption that here’s another way for Google to spy on you, the problem is that Google decided to break the Nest. A year or so ago Google force-fed programming into the thing (you have no choice in the matter: the software downloads automatically and unbidden), and that program is just simply incomprehensible. You can NOT figure out how to make it work.

Lately I’ve been waking up every morning at 2:00 a.m. sharp, in a fit of discomfort: thinking I’m having hot flashes!

Hot flashes? At 71? Really?

Through the wee-hours stupor, I realize the heater’s running. In a daze, I climb out of bed, stumble down the hall, and turn the damn thermostat back off. And I wonder: is this a senile error? Did I not turn it off last night? I’m SURE I turned it off. The house was colder than a bigawd when the dogs and I huddled together in the bed at 10 p.m. How can it be back on?

Well, of course, “back on” unbidden is the Nest’s nature. And there seems to be no way to tell it off, OFF, goddammit STAY OFF! The Nest will turn itself back on when it deems proper: at about 65 degrees. Thank you very much for arrogating my decisions unto Thyself, dear Google.

Peeved after I see this month’s power bill — about $30 more than it should be, even though it’s effin’ freezing in here when I’m not having the 2 a.m. “hot flash” — I google “nonprogrammable thermostat.”

What should come up but a simulacrum of the good old Honeywell round thermostat!

Unfortunately it’s not the real good old thermostat, because it’s not a mercury thermostat. That was the reason they took real thermostats — the ones that used to…you know, function? — off the market. We might hurt ourselves with that mercury. And God knows we’re all too stupid to figure out how to recycle it properly.

User reviews are middling. At Home Depot, the Honeywell racks up a 4 out 5 possible stars, with 14% hating it. At Amazon, though, a full 20% bash it with one-star reviews.  Since on average you can expect to see 9% negative, this comes under the heading of bad reviews. By and large the main complaint (except for the guy who got an empty box in the mail) is inaccuracy, but as I recall the old real Honeywell mercury thermostat left something to be desired in that department…it’s pretty easy to adapt to, though. Only 59% of Amazon reviewers love it up with 5 stars; most of those folk seem to be the nostalgic type, pining for gear that has escaped digitization.

On the other hand…i prob’ly fall into that category… 😀

So, what we have here, so far, are four tools so laden with electronic frou-frou that they barely operate:

• A shiny double oven, about $2,500 worth, whose highest and best use is to store pots and pans.

• A thermostat that thinks it knows your mind better than you do, and will not brook any argument.

• A car whose steering wheel is so packed with buttons to operate doo-dads that you have to take your hands off the wheel to honk the horn. Makes sense, eh? No one would ever think of honking a horn when some emergency was under way… A car bearing 28 computers, which working in concert will track your every move, operate your telephone, tell you which way to turn (not always correctly), and god only knows what else. But it’ll cost you $1,000 to fix a door that quits operating.

• A clothes washer that will not wash, but that will explode. 😀

Hilariously, a few days ago Samsung sent me an urgent message with instructions about what can and cannot be washed in the washer — your comforter, for example, topmost among the NOTs… And with a new dial stick-on emphasizing that you cannot wash sheets in any cycle other than the “bedding” cycle. Which is just as well, one figures, since that’s the only cycle that releases enough water to launder so much as a pair of nylon panties…

Well, now we have a very fine wash machine, a throwback to the 1970s, whose agitator actually sloshes the laundry around in a whole tubful of water.

The dishwasher, a Bosch, has started to make ominous growling noises. I suppose that will be the next to go, soon to be replaced by yet another over-engineered device that doesn’t work. Kitchen appliances, including the Bosch models, are now engineered to crap out in 7 years. The other day SDXB reflected that he’s been in Sun City for 13 years now. He moved out there shortly after I moved into this house, in the wake of a dispute with a nefarious neighbor. So…that dishwasher is well into its dotage.

Just like its human…which also growls a lot.

Speed Queen: It Just WORKS!

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By golly, the thing DOES work. Yesterday I took it into my fevered brain to subject the ballyhooed Speed Queen washer to the acid test: tossed a vast  mound of dirty clothes into the thing. That would be as follows:

5 kitchen towels
2 linen napkins
4 pairs of jeans
1 pair of cutoffs
2 knit shirts
1 sweatshirt
2 pairs of stretchy pants
4 camis
5 pairs of underpants
2 pairs of socks

This pile of debris stuffed the machine’s tub right up to the top. Half-expecting the worst, I turned it on and ran away.

In 30 minutes flat, the cycle had run through.

A fair amount of soap suds resided in the utility sink, though. (In this house, the drain attachment, rather than plugging directly into the sewer drain, hooks over the side of the sink and water runs off down the sink’s drain.) No question: I’ve been using too much of that HE detergent, even though I took a Sharpie and traced a bright green line all the way around the Tide bottle’s cap at the “medium-load” mark.

So I ran it through the “rinse” cycle.

More suds.

Ran it through “rinse” again. Suds gone.

Understand: this means those jeans have gone through FOUR cycles of sloshing around. If they had gone through even ONE cycle in the accursed Samsung — by “they” in a Samsung I mean two pair, not four pair, not even one pair plus a few shirts and camis — they would come out looking like…oh yes, let us never forget it, THIS:

i. hate. the. samsung. goddamn. washer!

With profound trepidation, I reached into the washer. And what should come out but…clothes.

Unbraided, untangled, freaking CLEAN clothes. One item at a time. Nary a single piece was twisted or knotted onto another piece. They all came out pretty well unwrinkled, too. Nothing absolutely had to be run through the dryer to beat the wrinkles out. A quick shake or two, and even the knit tops and cotton T-shirts could go straight onto a hanger to dry.

Huh. Think of that.

doghairNext: ran ten days’ worth of microfiber rags through a “heavy” cycle. These, used once a day to swiffer up 1868 square feet of tilework, were clogged — CLOGGED, I tell you! — with dog hair and dust.

Now, from this experiment, I must admit, I expected nothing. The image doesn’t show all the fine, vacuum-cleaner-choking dog hair collected by the microfiber-swiffing strategy, but trust me: only the gods themselves could get that stuff out of a Costco microfiber rag.

To avoid introducing gritty sand into the washer (tracked into the house by me and by the dawgs), I did soak these rags in the scrub bucket while the first load of wash was running, and then sloshed each one briefly and wrung it out before tossing it into the Speed Queen. And also by way of shaking out dog hair, I did run them through the dryer.

The result? Defies belief! Not only were the rags dog-hair free — completely dog-hair free! — they were cleaner than they’ve been since they were new. A couple of the older specimens had turned permanently gray. No amount of washing would get out the fully absorbed grime. When I pulled them out of the dryer this morning, I found that every one of them is yellow! Even the rubbed-in, soaked-in, scoured-in permanent gray dirt washed out.

Hot damn.

So: I’m going to have to train myself to use HE detergent properly. You actually can buy old-fashioned Wisk through Amazon — Wisk used to be the best of the detergents available to ordinary consumers, followed closely by Tide. But Speed Queen urges consumers to go ahead and use the HE stuff. Just don’t…overdo it. Apparently I remain excessively enthusiastic about detergent. 😀

So the question is, just exactly how environmentally immoral is this machine?

True, it does fill the tub all the way up to the top when you set it to wash a large load. But…are we talking about something like the wondrous environmentally correct toilets that supposedly used 1/3 the amount of water of a real toilet but that had to be flushed three times to do the job?

I got almost two weeks’ worth of laundry into one load. To wash four pairs of bluejeans in the Samsung, I would have had to run them through two pair at a time — otherwise I’d be pulling out a braid of denim that would take ten or fifteen minutes to untangle. Nor could I put anything else into the Samsung with them. Anything that had a sleeve or a bra strap, when combined with a pair of pants, would end up in a braid. So that single load in the Speed Queen did three Samsung loads.

Additionally, in order to get the clothes even moderately clean with the Samsung, I had to prewash them by hand in a scrub bucket. That required pouring several gallons of hot water into the bucket and adding detergent. So we not only had to run three loads of water using the largest cycle the Samsung offered (the “bedding” cycle would almost get a small load of clothing wet), we had three bucketsful of water, plus the extra detergent needed for the hand-wash maneuver — to wash what can be done well in one Speed Queen load.

If I didn’t feel inclined to wash the clothes by hand before running them through the Samsung, I would still need to fill the scrub bucket and pour water into the damned washer, to trick the thing into releasing enough water into the tub to sort of get the clothes clean. Or even to get them wet all over.

So…to get the same amount of laundry done, I’m willing to estimate I was using at least as much water as one Speed Queen load — only having to do it in three or four loads, each of which consumed an hour and ten minutes’ worth of electricity to run.

I’ll bet that’s not a wash. Dollars to donuts, the Speed Queen wins.

The Washer Saga

If You’d Asked Me…
High Inefficiency: Washers & Rx Plans
A Thousand Curses on “Energy-Efficient” Appliances
How to Wash Clothes in a Samsung Washer
How to Get Sand Out of a Top-Loading HE Washer
Samsung Washers: Told You So…
Appliance Hell/Appliance Heaven
Rumination: Of Appliances and Politics

Rumination: Of Appliances and Politics

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So the politically correct “high”-efficiency top-loading Samsung is now history, replaced by a new inefficient, water-guzzling, irresponsible right-wing-crazy Made-in-America Speed Queen agitator-driven washer.

Just took the first load out. The Speed Queen took exactly 30 minutes to run a medium-sized load on a cycle that took the hateful Samsung an hour and ten minutes to complete. The clothes look clean. They actually got wet, if you can imagine, without my having to pour a pailful of water in on top of them. And they did not come out in a wad or in a braid.

That is to say, the inefficient, water-guzzling, irresponsible right-wing-crazy Made-in-America Speed Queen agitator-driven washer works the way a washer is supposed to work: it washes your clothes, gets them clean, and does it in a reasonable amount of time.

Yesterday while I was sitting here waiting for the repairman to show up to fix the oven (again!), so that it can be turned off (again!) at the breaker switch and left that way permanently, so that if and when I want to sell this house or I croak over and my son decides to sell, the house will have a working double oven and will not require a $2,500 replacement before the place can be put on the market, it occurred to me that Americans have pretty good reason, overall, to be mad enough to sweep out the old, endlessly politically correct regime, even if the new regime is led by a narcissistic bigot who has no clue what he’s doing.

The choice is bad; the reasoning is….not altogether unreasonable.

There I was, after all, sitting in an (expensively) paid-off house that had no functioning oven and no believably functioning clothes washer. Stumbling across a brand of washer that is made in America with American-made parts felt like some kind of freaking miracle. Discovering rave consumer reviews of the things made me feel a) beside myself with joy that I may(!) have found a washing machine that works and b) mad as hell that I got suckered into buying the useless (exploding) high-(in)efficiency Samsung.

And I thought…god damn it! Here I am in the (supposedly) greatest country in the world, sliding into Third-World conditions. If I want to bake a loaf of bread, I’ll have to do it outside over an open fire in the grill. To get my clothes clean, I have to wash them by hand — all of them, including jeans and T-shirts. I might as well be washing the damn things in the Ganges. And for the privilege, I’ve paid through the wazoo. What’s next?

Much as I believe Donald Trump is not the man to do the job, nevertheless I could in theory buy into the idea that it’s past time for a change of direction.

• We have politically correct foreign-made wash machines that take almost two hours to not get our clothes clean;
• we have household appliances with, across the board, life expectancy of seven years (if you’re lucky);
• we’ve seen toilets that don’t flush and faucets that take half your lifetime to dispense a potful of water and showers that don’t shower, all in the name of environmental correctness;
• we have health insurance that costs a king’s ransom and covers nothing;
• we have Gloria Vanderbilt jeans made in African countries with pants-leg lengths that don’t match;
• we have bras made in China whose Dixie-cup design fits no one (and NO OTHER CHOICES in any store you can find);
• we have clothing made in China that falls apart within a few weeks or months;
• we have trade agreements that have allowed greedy, socially and environmentally uncaring US corporations to send jobs and production overseas to countries that have no safety regulations and no quality control, where a skilled carpenter thinks he’s lucky to earn $7.50 a day;
• we have copper plumbing that comes from the seller with pinhole leaks in it, made in China;
• we’ve had dog food that poisoned our pets, no matter what the cost and purported quality, because all brands are made in the same few Chinese factories;
• we’ve had toothpaste that poisoned its users, made in China;
• we have high-end, brain-bangingly expensive air conditioners that work no better and last no longer than the cheapest model, because they’re all made in the same place, China…

Don’t worry, be happy, we’re told: Americans whose highest and best skills qualified them to work on assembly lines can land great jobs in IT and medical care!

Right.

Then we have the nanny-state effect:

• wherein we can’t buy a package of Sudafed without signing for it, lest we decide to turn it into meth (does it occur to any of our Governmental Parents that maybe people who choose to consume meth deserve what they get?);
• we can’t buy a bottle of cough medicine lest we decide to drink it and get high;
• we can’t get a bottle of anything, from cough drops to cleanser, that doesn’t have caps that are impossible to open, so that we end up having to leave most household products sitting in our cabinets with no lids on, or else transferring everything to other containers;
• we can’t open the lid on a running washing machine lest we stupidly stick our hands into the spinning tub and mangle our arms;
• we can’t start a car without our seatbelts on, unless we wish to be bonged at nonstop;
• we can’t order a steak at a restaurant without being told eating rare meat could make us sick;
• we surely can’t order a plate of sushi without hearing or reading the same dire warning;
• we can’t buy a bottle of wine without being told the risk to a pregnant woman’s fetus is so dire she probably should go to jail for even thinking about swilling a glass of Beaujolais with dinner;
• and speaking of fetuses, children are no longer allowed to walk to school or play in the neighborhood park lest they be kidnapped by bogeymen; dare to let yours do so and you’ll be arrested for neglect and child abuse…

And then we have the oppressive political correctness, in which Those Who Are Our Betters tell us what we are and what we are not allowed to say, since we’re such ill-mannered troglodytes we don’t know how to function in polite society.

You know, I consider myself a civil grown-up, and so I have no objection to welcoming people of all genetic and ethnic persuasions into the human race; I do not go around calling homosexuals and lesbians nasty names (nor do I concern myself with their bedroom life); I do not care what your religious calling is, as long as you don’t foist it on me. And so most of the politically correct bullshit doesn’t apply here.

But…there are moments.

The moment when I lost patience with political correctness came some years ago, when I was teaching full-time at the Great Desert University’s westside campus. This was before I migrated to the main campus to found and operate an editorial office.

It was coming on to Christmastime when a memo came down from the Dean of Liberal (heh) Arts, informing us that we were not to utter the words “Merry Christmas” when exchanging holiday greetings in the office. We could say “Happy Holidays.” We could say “Happy Kwanzaa.” We could even say “Happy Chanukka.” But we were not, absolutely positively NOT to say “Merry Christmas.”

Furthermore, we were not to exchange greeting cards that had any kind of religious imagery on them. No babies dozing in mangers. No angels singing. No old guys traipsing across the desert following a star. No haloes. None of that. And of course, no “Merry Christmas” emblazoned upon any such greeting card. Acceptable: peace doves, wintry landscapes, and the “Happy Holidays” slogan.

You think I exaggerate?

No.

Academia can get ridiculous. But this took the cake.

Eventually the oven repair guy showed up. He’s an independent contractor, has his own business…not an employee of Sears. He turned on the breaker and discovered…lo! the control panel was working. I explained that it was showing the F7 error, which Sears had twice told me meant the control panel was shot and had to be replaced, to the tune of $500.

Quoth he: not quite so. It also can indicate loose wiring somewhere. Wiring can work loose, he said, through expansion and contraction caused by the heating and cooling inside the oven.

He took the panel apart, tightened all the wiring, pulled the oven out of the wall and checked to see that the fan was working (if not, he suggested, the heat could be damaging the control panel), found the fan was working fine, put the thing back together, and charged me $81.

He did agree that the control panel on these ovens has a limited life expectancy, and he confirmed that the part is no longer made. And he did suggest that if I didn’t want to buy a new oven ($2000+) in the near future, I shouldn’t use it at all.

No wonder Sears is going out of business, hm?

So the oven is returned to its best and highest use: holding pots, pans, and cutting boards. But at least now I have a washer that works. For the time being.