Equipment Malfunction: A Love Story

Last Sun­day I got up and, like I always do, turned on my iMac to check my email. After giv­ing my pro­grams a minute to load, I returned to find a mes­sage say­ing that my pre­ferred net­work could not be located. Hm. This type of mes­sage, though not com­mon, isn’t unheard of. My home wire­less [...] Read more »

New Car Shopping, Part 2

First les­son learned: don’t try buy­ing a new car just days before Christ­mas while also prepar­ing for the Big Fam­ily Christ­mas Party and your daughter’s first trip home from col­lege. I can’t say that I regret our pur­chase or even that we made any mis­takes regard­ing the car cho­sen or the price paid but I’m [...] Read more »

New Car Shopping, Part 1

Thanks to a hit-and-run dri­ver, we’re in the mar­ket for a new car. This is not a good thing. The destroyed vehi­cle was My Love’s baby — a New­port Blue 2007 Sub­aru Impreza Wagon. He loved that car and he had the pink slip, baby. All paid off. We’d intended this car to last, just [...] Read more »

When Dryers Go Bad, Part I

My clothes washer/dryer set is approx­i­mately 14 years old.  In other words, it’s prac­ti­cally brand new. For the past year or so [which is to say for-a-while-now-but-I-really-can’t-remember-when-it-started], my clothes dryer has been eat­ing clothes.  Okay, maybe not tech­ni­cally eat­ing as in mas­ti­cat­ing with teeth and all that, but eat­ing as in grab­bing onto and damaging. The unit [...] Read more »