And life goes on

[stephbg]

Did an important thing this afternoon: called a gas person to come and try to repair the switches on my gas stove. I've been down to a single working burner for some time now, but with the beginning of the end of the microwave I felt my cooking options were getting a little precarious. It's hard to grill porridge.



I have a good feeling about this gas person: he's busy, but he called me back promptly when he said he would. He seemed to have a realistic understanding of scheduling, too, which makes a nice change, and warned me that he might need to get parts because--wait for it--my stove might be an unusual model. Best case scenario is that it needs a more powerful degreaser than I've been game to try on its innards. I'm not really keen to experiment with the switches on a gas appliance. We will have to see what Wednesday afternoon brings.

The bench stove itself came with the house and I'm assuming that it was put in during the great hideous kitchen renno of '93ish. I didn't replace it when we did our own kitchen upgrade, because it still worked and I couldn't really justify replacing an appliance on cosmetic grounds. The chipped rusted white enamel look kind of works with the benchtop design anyway. Much as I'd love to replace it with something in gleaming stainless steel, I have to nurse it along with repairs while I can. Rather like the poor old Catmobile.

The sickly microwave OTOH is not a candidate for repair, but I'll try and keep up with its new mysterious behaviour for as long as possible. I've had it for about 4 1/2 years, which is longer than I thought, but I still considered it "the new microwave" and was most annoyed when it started to lose its tiny mind. My "new" fridge is probably over 10 years old by now too. Ah the curse of getting old in a disposable society. Buying things is such a pest, and then I have to do it AGAIN.

The dishwasher remains in its deceased estate, and I feel no urge to replace it.

The "new" laptop's fan is getting noisy. Is it bad noisy? I tell myself it's not, but perhaps a healthier level of paranoia is required to get me to back up more often.

I want to be able to record digital TV.

I want to punch holes in my ceiling to let the hot air out. This house has no ventilation whatsoever.

I want security screen doors at either end of my house so cool air can circulate.

I want many things, it would seem. Good thing I've got my health, eh?

Oh.

On the bright side... I didn't get stuck in traffic today, and if I had, but hadn't had The Catmobile serviced, she may very well have chosen this morning to break down and/or into flame. On the bright side of that twice-avoided dark side, I almost certainly would have been in the left hand lane at the time, and my phone is charged, so it could have been a lot worse. Might have been a bit of a wait for a tow, but it wasn't. Yay!

And actually had a good three hours at work this afternoon, finally breaking the spirit of a messy job that's been resisting my loving attention for too long now. Some information just doesn't want to be structured. But I did. So there. Ni.

Comments

gas stoves

[ozdragonlady.livejournal.com]

are generally the easiest to get clean. Normally they come so you can take them apart and wash the bits in handy sinks/tubs/outdoors with a hose. You can safely use industrial strength degreasers on them - avoiding any little wires for automatic ignition/thermometers, of course. Splendid for cleaning up the bits that make up the burners. They often have aluminium flanges and such, so look before assaulting them with corrosives. The main bits should be iron-based though. You can use harsh methods with them (you may need to invest in industrial strength rubber gloves if it is really messy).

Of course, this is why mine is getting brown around the edges because I havent taken the top apart ... but I could ... It comes apart quite sensibly.

In my previous house I was the recipient of a new electric stove, and they come apart quite nicely nowadays ... I was pleasantly surprised at that :) Nice to see industrial designers actually listening to users for once.

I have also found that tradesman these days are punctual, use the mobile when theyre unavoidably late, professional in their evaluations and work - and, even if they occasionally (rather than always) dont tidy up after themselves as well as they might, do a miles more effective job than they used to. Unusual in a booming economy and not enough tradesfolk to go around. Customer service abounds.