Friday, January 25, 2008

The Stoveman Commeth...

Ding-Dong! Off she goes! I jolt out of a deep sleep coverred by No-Lean as a blanket. Cat scratches, a complaining Maaa! she screams and I'm jogging to the front door. Who the hell is here at 8 am sharp?! It's barely light...it's the A&G mechanic to fix my ailing Whirlpool oven...great! I show him to her and tell him of my own troubleshooting, "an ignitor, I think", he nods and gets to work and I slunk back to the office/bedroom where I live my lonely nighttime life these days...snoring you know...disturbs the sleep of my ever faithful but easily disturbed mate Kelly. Sometime later he calls for me..."It's the ignitor alright, parts and installation will be 422 dollars", I nod and agree, it's high but what are you going to do? Can't replace it for 422 dollars and go thru all that work besides, I need it now I have 4 guests for Mexican dinner tomorrow night that Audrey and I are cooking up, I need my stove! Besides the US Govt has seen fit to send me 1200 USD in a tax rebate scheme that I'm supposed to spend to buy 42 inch HDTV's and such, looks like it'l pay for this stove repair instead and buy a smaller screen, good for the repair business, bad for Best Buy. He calls, finds the part, now can't get the dead ignitor to give up it's place in the back of the oven because it's retaining screws are stuck. Damn. I skulk back to my computer and keep writing.
The weather today you are thinmking? Oh it's Sunny California, windy, cold and raining, what else? I look at the forecast, samo-samo thru the weekend. Brrrrrrr.
Dead oven, bah humbug!

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Winter in Sunny California...HA!

Sunny where? All it does is rain and blow and cloud over and it feels like my Brit friends say THIER winter is like. Brrrrrrrr is the word most often heard around here. Of course we could have it warmer IF we turned the bloody thermostat up to some reasonable warm temperature like 20C, but nooooo it's expensive so we suffer along shivering at 16! Brrrrrrr. The cats are handy tho, they lie about warming this place and that to a nice temp, they lay with us when we sleep like furry, purring blankets. They along with thermal underwear are the answer at bedtime when the maiden of the house drops the temp to the nightime temp of 10C! Brrrrrrr and Brrrrrrr. Even the cats are rebelling. The forecast this week is for drizzle, rain and highs of 5C! Brrrrrr! THAT for the next while...over the weekend for sure. California sun...not here! We DID venture south to attend a mosquito abatement conference in Palm Springs! Warm at last, warm at last, thank god almighty we're warm at last! 4 days in the sunny blue skies of that other place...Southern California. Nice. Then we drove to Hollywood and attended a Dr. Phil show, very much fun and with my loud clapping and yelling attracted a FREE Dr. Phil book! We had a wonderful weeklong trip then returned last Friday to our little cloudy cold world. Alas.