Saga

07/06/2010

I owe a major update but I’ve been so busy that this is my first real opportunity to sit down and collect my thoughts.

Almost two weeks ago I had to fly to Seattle to check out a piece of equipment that the company is considering purchasing. I drove to Charlotte on a Thursday morning, flew nonstop to Seattle, collected my bag and rental car, and found the hotel. The company I was visiting was located in Redmond (not far from the Microsoft world headquarters) so I had a half hour drive north to the motel which was only a mile or so from the location I would be visiting. It was 3pm local time, which meant that my internal clock thought it was 6pm and my last food had been at 7:30am Seattle time while on the plane. I found a neighborhood pizza restaurant and enjoyed a very nice early dinner of salad and pizza then went back to my room. I had called my wife while waiting on my checked luggage and again while waiting on my meal to be prepared so I didn’t really think much about it when exhaustion and a full stomach made me too drowsy to stay awake past 6pm Seattle time. I pulled the curtains to block out the evening sunlight and fell into a deep sleep. Which was interrupted around 11pm by my phone buzzing and beeping. I rolled over to look at it, I had 10 missed calls and two voice mails from my wife asking me to call her. I thought something bad had happened but no, she just thought I would call before bed. Since it was 9pm back home when I went to bed and I had called during dinner I thought I HAD called before bed! After being awakened after 5 hours sleep I tossed and turned the rest of the night and didn’t get any more good uninterrupted sleep. I dressed and prepared for my meeting the next morning and discussed the equipment and our needs with the President of that company from 8:30am until almost 1pm then I got in the rental and aimed it south to Oregon. I have a former college roommate who lives about an hour east of Portland along the Columbia River, I haven’t seen him since 1997 and I really wanted to take the opportunity to visit him. Little did I know that evidently it’s customary in the Pacific Northwest to take off work early on Friday and start the weekend. Even though I was on the road at 1pm I had very heavy traffic all the way to Portland and the trip, which should have taken four hours, took five and a quarter. At least the drive was scenic, especially the drive from Portland east through the Columbia River Gorge. I spent some time with my friend and his family, had dinner, then left at 9:30pm for the long drive back to the hotel to pack. I arrived at the hotel at 2am, packed, briefly considered just staying up all night, then fell into bed for an hour and a half before waking up to check out and run to the airport. Traffic was horrendous, even on a Saturday morning, and I was pushing it to get the rental returned and get through Security for my flight. Fortunately everything was on time and I napped for a bit on the return flight which had a layover in Houston, TX. In Houston I had to take the tram and a bus to get to the proper terminal, eating into my hour and a half of layover time. I got to the gate, got my boarding pass, and walked 75 yards to a McDonald’s in the terminal. Just as I was finishing my lunch they called my flight so I had to briskly walk the 75 yards to board. I landed in Charlotte at 7:30ish, collected my bag, and had to wait for over a half hour for a shuttle to take me to the long-term lot which is offsite at the Charlotte airport. Once I finally got to the car and drove home I was looking forward to relaxing.

You know what they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men, right? I got home at 9:30pm and the first thing I heard was, “The washing machine is broken.” The Sunday I had planned for relaxing and catching up on sleep I missed during my trip was replaced by a Sunday of dragging the broken washer out, lugging a compact washer/dryer combo up the steps from the garage, setting it up, and troubleshooting the washing machine. According to the online troubleshooting tips I found the problem was likely a part of the clutch for the drum, which is easy and inexpensive to replace so I ordered the parts. Parts arrived Wednesday and I installed them. I was again reminded that Murphy was an optimist, the clutch didn’t fix the problem. According to the troubleshooting guide, if the clutch isn’t the problem then it’s the transmission. My Maytag was less than 6 years old, yet the transmission was shot. At this point I decided to just replace it and cut my losses. I researched washing machines and found that it’s almost impossible to get a super-large capacity washer now that’s just a washer, the large ones all seem to be the Energy Star compliant ones that sense the load and use tricks to wash with very little water. That seems to be problematic in top-loading washing machines so I looked at front loaders which are still somewhat problematic but less so than the new generation of top-loaders. My wife still wanted a top-loader though, so we investigated both kinds. Thursday was our 25th anniversary, we went out to dinner at a nice restaurant then went shopping for washers. She narrowed it down to two top-loaders, a Whirlpool Cabrio and a Maytag (I refuse to even consider a GE appliance after seeing how much they cheapened them in the ‘90’s) and I had been looking at a LG front-loader. After we got home I did an exhaustive search on problems for all three, I found that the Whirlpool either was great or a lemon. There seemed to be no middle ground, either it worked great or it caused tons of problems. The Maytag seemed like a decent washer but it had an alarming trend of load sensor failures. I discussed it with my wife and we decided to give the Maytag a try since it was the most familiar of the ones she had looked at. We went to the store and were told that the Maytag wasn’t a stock item and would have to be ordered. The only one they had in stock was a smaller capacity washer. This was at Home Depot, we decided to check the other Home Depot in town just to see if they had one in stock. At the second Home Depot they had the LG I had been looking at on clearance, they would sell me the floor model for $448. I discussed it with my wife briefly, our options were the LG front loader or the smaller Maytag top-loader. She agreed to try the LG, so we had it loaded into our car and brought it home. Thus begins the saga of the weekend…

Friday night we did all the remaining laundry in the compact washer/dryer, then Saturday morning I dragged it back out of the laundry room and down to the garage again. I removed the dryer, measured the space for a pedestal for the new washer and the old dryer to sit on, and went out to buy materials for the pedestal. I also got paint for the laundry room, when I got back home we scrubbed the floor and baseboards then painted the laundry room and dragged the dead washer to the curb. Sunday I got up, we had lunch, and I spent 5 hours outside measuring and cutting wood for the frame of the pedestal. I got the basics of the pedestal framed up before dark. Yesterday I got up early, ran the string trimmer and mowed the front lawn then had lunch before going out to finish the pedestal. I also prepared a side of ribs and put them in the smoker while I worked. I finished the pedestal around 3:30pm and brought it inside, Stepson was due to come over at 6pm to help move the new washer and have dinner with us. We struggled the washer out of the car and into the house, got the dryer and new washer hooked up, and by 7pm we finally had the laundry room back in order. I think I’ll find work relaxing this week, after the whirlwind that was the past two weeks!