I recently discovered how much easier and faster it is to download pictures to Facebook instead of Blogger. That's where you'll find my Germany pictures from our trip in early July.
Several of our big ticket items have recently bitten the dust - our minivan, the dishwasher, the water heater, and of course the back door that was badly bent during the break in. The kitchen door handle broke, and the door handle to Hugo's bedroom will only work from inside the room. The kitchen door handle has been fixed, the water heater is being installed this very minute (more on that later), and the dishwasher will be installed tomorrow. Continuing with our tradition of breaking appliances and other vital things, our oven no longer works. I've gotten into the habit lately of locking the oven door so that Hugo doesn't pull it open - as he did a couple weeks ago. Tonight I put some salmon in the oven. I've been reminded that you shouldn't shut the oven door when broiling because that's how things get burned. But again, Hugo in the kitchen opening stuff. So the salmon is in the oven sizzling away, and I go to check on it and the lock is stuck. No amount of shimmying, tugging or hitting will open it. Several frantic minutes pass as Joe tries fruitlessly to force the oven door open. The stove is hopping all around the floor, the door is starting to bend, the salmon is cooking away (the oven's been turned off but it's still hot). I'm sure we'll be calling the fire department when the fish catches fire and starts billowing smoke out of the warped oven door. We finally got the door open and removed a very dry piece of fish. In the end, it turns out you can access the lock by removing the front panel which is held in place by two tiny screws. Would have been helpful to know that before rendering the oven inoperable. They say bad things happen in 3's. How many are we up to now? Should I be on the lookout for something else to break?
So the fine print about the water heater is that there's an extra $800 in installation charges that they didn't tell us about at Sears, on top of the $250 we already paid for "basic" installation, whatever that is. Evil, just evil.
