I went outside for my morning stroll and was greeted by the prettiest little thing…my rose.
If you remember, I posted a photo of a rosebud. Well now, my little rosebud has bloomed and turned into a beautiful rose. This bush has, I would guess, about ten rosebuds on it. We have another rose bush across the walk with many more. I can’t wait for that one to bloom so I can take a picture of that for you.
Enjoy…
As mentioned in my previous post, our dryer stopped working last night.
Ok, here it is…when I pressed the start button, I only heard the motor struggling, with no turning of the drum. If I had the front door open and fooled the dryer to think it was closed by holding the switch, I could get the drum turning with my foot. It wouldn’t turn very well and I would smell something buring. It wasn’t the belt because I had already replaced that earlier and it was still tight. You know what? I didn’t even care. This is the same dryer that was leaving grease type stains on our clothes.
I thought it was time for a new dryer. I tried Home Depot to no avail. You can read about that mess here. I am sick of that store. It’s starting to turn into something similar to a dirty Wal-Mart. Well, that’s the one I go to anyway.
Paul was gracious enough to meet me at the Newburgh, NY Lowes to pick up a new dryer. I was going to get the GE dryer that cost about $350, but after talking with the sales guy and learning that most of the dryers they sell have the same parts, just different features, I opted for the less expensive Amana product. He also informed me that Whirlpool owned both Amana and Roper. Hmmm, interesting. Upon further inspection, I discovered many similarities between many of the dryers.
I got in a tiff with a guy at work. He kept telling me that I just have to get one of those $800 jobbers because they were real quality. I tried to tell him that this was a dryer to leave in this house after we move in a few years. I didn’t particularly need all that much expensive quality when I was going to hand it to someone else. I was basically looking for an “on” button with some good features that wouldn’t leave stains on our clothes. I mean, c’mon, how many options do you really need or use with a freakin’ clothes dryer? Perhaps the more expensive ones fold the clothes too.
Anyway, I got home and set the whole thing up. I turned it on and immediately heard this scraping noise coming from the back. Who knows what the heck that was. After a few minutes, it went away. I am going to chalk that one up to its break in period.
I think this may be a pretty decent dryer if it doesn’t break. Hey, let me ask you a question. How much money is a guy going to have to spend right before he and his sweet baby doll have to pay for a new porch? This is getting absurd. I mean, the lawnmower (I still haven’t received the parts for the other one), the air conditioner and now the dryer…I am not even going to ask you what next.
PS - Thank you Paul for doing me this big favor.
UPDATE: That scraping sound was driving me nuts, especially when I put in a load of wet laundry. I turned the dryer off, unplugged it and turned it around. Then, I noticed that the back cover was pushed in so it was in turn, pushing the exhaust fan housing against the exhaust fan. That was causing the sound. I popped it back out and now it is fine and quiet. I guess that happened during shipment or something.
I won’t boycott them, because I like them, but Home Depot is definately not on my good list anymore. Lowes is just blowing them out of the water. I thought that my trip to Home Depot the other night was tragic because of all the dying plants I saw, but this trip topped the cake.
Ok, here goes…our dryer bit the dust last night. After troubleshooting and diagnosing, I decided that our 30 year old dryer needed to be replaced. I will write another post about that later, but I wanted to share the exchange I had today with the salesperson…
ME: Hi, I want this dryer, let’s load it up.
THEM: Wait, you can’t have that, we have to order it.
ME: Ok, so you don’t have it in stock?
THEM: No, we can have it to your house on Friday.
ME: Ok, deliver is free since you don’t have it in stock, right?
THEM: No, it will cost you $55 for delivery.
ME: Ok, well, let’s just have it shipped to the store and I can come back on Friday to get it.
THEM: No, we don’t do that. I asked the manager and he said no.
ME: So you are trying to tell me that you don’t have the dryer in stock and if I want it, I have to have it delivered to my house for an additional $55? There is no way for me to pick it up from the store?
THEM: Yes. Well, we can give you a mail-in rebate for the delivery cost.
ME: Ok, well, does someone need to be at the house in Friday? I ask because I have a job.
THEM: Yes, someone needs to be at the house.
ME: Thank you. Goodbye. I will look at Lowes. (Thinking: Can you make this purchase any more difficult for me?)
A few hours later, I called Lowes to see if they had the same exact model in stock. Here is how the phone call went…
ME: Hi, do you have this model in stock?
THEM: Yes, come and get it.
ME: Thank you. I love you.
Now, mind you, I asked Home Depot about three different models on the floor. They didn’t have any. They had four in stock of the cheap one. The salesperson told me that they didn’t have enough room for all those dryers. Well, I guess they don’t want my money. Sorry guys. Lowes had enough room…so much in fact that they had five of the model that I wanted.
It really pisses me off about how they wouldn’t work with me at all. They wouldn’t even entertain the thought of getting the dryer to the store for me to pick up. I mean, my debit card was almost falling out of my pocket it wanted to be used so badly.
Maybe Paul was right.
This is way cool. Google Maps now has street view in limited cities. I have no idea how this works, but it is pretty neat to check out. This link above even shows a face. That’s how close it gets.
I like to check out Google Maps for tons of stuff. When Laura had to go somewhere across the river a few months ago, we pulled up Google Maps and traced the exact route she would take. It was SO much better than a regular map. With the new Street View, you can actually see the street at eye level to help out even more. Just make sure not to be doing something wrong…if you catch my drift. You never know if you will be caught for the world to see.
I thought this was pretty funny.
Somehow, the other day I stumbled upon John McCain’s MySpace page. Maybe it was in a news article or something. I got a kick out of it because I didn’t think senators got into the whole MySpace thing. I guess I was wrong.
I remember back in the day when all the old CEOs of the big investment houses kept preaching that the internet was just a fad. “It will never make it. It will disappear. We are staying away from that thing,” they said. Oh, I can only imagine what the politicians said as well. You gotta remember that some of the senators are a little older than the average MySpace user and some of them are a little less than loose.
I totally accept that a 14 year old girl has a MySpace page to chat with friends and do something while talking on the phone at night. I can only imagine how long it took some intern at McCain’s (or any senator for that matter) office to talk the senator into setting up this page. Not that I have anything against senators or MySpace pages. I think the whole thing is fun and am pointing out how far we have become. Wait…hold on…actually, I LOVE SENATORS AND MYSPACE!!!
Ok, with that behind us, here is a list of presidential contender MySpace pages…
- John McCain
- Hillary Clinton
- Barack Obama
- Joe Biden
- Christopher Dodd
- John Edwards
- Mike Gravel
- Dennis Kucinich
- Bill Richardson
- Sam Brownback
- Jim Gilmore
- Rudy Giuliani
- Mike Huckabee
- Duncan Hunter
- Ron Paul
- Mitt Romney
- Tom Tancredo
- Tommy Thompson
- John H. Cox
These are just the Democrats and Republicans. There is a long list of others, but I would get too bored listing them here. Plus, most of you have never heard of them. If any of the links above are incorrect, please let me know.
Sooo…getting into politics a bit, here is what I would like to see (yeah right). I would like to see a debate between Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. From what I have seen and heard throughout the years, these two are the most honest yet. They tend to say things that are true, instead of what you want to hear. That’s probably what is going to give them a hard time in this race.
I am not sure I ever told you this. Last Autumn, I went over to Home Depot at one of the very last days that the garden center was open. A few months earlier, I befriended a really nice lady there. It wasn’t too difficult for me, since I am there almost every other day. Well, on this particular day, she was there and I was there. Fortunately, a bunch of plants that were headed towards the dumpster were there too.
I can’t quite remember exactly what I purchased that day, but I do remember that I picked up two rose bushes. The best part of the whole thing is that this very nice lady marked them down to like a dollar each. I planted them at home, in the front of the house, and in no time, they produced very nice pink roses.
Well, they are starting to bud again. I thought I might share a photo of one of the buds for you…
These are great plants and you can be sure I will share another photo or two when they are in their full glory.
Have you ever listened to a radio show and thought you have been taken away to someplace else. Man oh man…last night’s Thistle & Shamrock with Fiona Ritchie was spectacular.
It always seems as though when I have my great experiences while driving and listening to the radio, I am alone. I already told you all about last summer’s drives with Garrison Keillor, but this one was just as nice. All I ever want to do is share the fun, but I suppose this is just the way it is going to be.
Here is what the Thistle & Shamrock is about…right from their site…“Take a trip to the foothills of the Scottish Highlands where The Thistle & Shamrock®, one of NPR’s longest running and most popular music offerings, is created each week.” It’s great music with great commentary. Fiona Ritchie does a nice job of describing what each song is about with some good history. It’s pretty refreshing to hear someone care about what they do, kind of without the commercialism.
Last night (May27, 2007), Fiona described a song that she was going to play as one of the most beautiful songs ever played with a fiddle. She described it as written by a man over 200 years ago for his second wife of thirty years. When she played the song, I discovered that she was right, it was a very beautiful song. There really is nothing I enjoy more than my evening drives while listening to great radio. The temperature was perfect, the sky was perfect, everything was perfect except the fact that my destination was a bit too close.
Anyway, I took a look on her playlist and discovered that she keeps each show’s playlist up for only two weeks. Last night’s isn’t up yet, but I will take another look. Perhaps, if anyone knows which song I am talking about, they can leave a comment to enlighten me. If I find it, I will write another post about it.
So I broke down again. I couldn’t have my sweet honey baby sitting in our living room sweating from the summer
(or late spring) heat. The curtains are working well, but we still needed something to take the edge off.
I hopped in my car last night and headed for Lowes. Laura asked if I could drop her off to do some walking. I did that and went on my merry way. On my way to Lowes, I listened to the Irish show on NPR…more of that in the next post. So listen to this…I get to Lowes and pull in the parking lot. Hmmmm…seems like there aren’t too many cars here. I was on a mission because I wanted to get the new air conditioner as well as two more trees to plant close to the house. I want more shade on the front windows.
I saw a bunch of employees pushing the lawn tractors back inside, so I stopped and asked what time they closed. The girl told me 7PM. Man!!! I forgot it was Sunday. Oh well, I decided to drive over to Home Depot. This really screwed me up because I had the perfect air conditioner picked out online from all the reseach I did. It was Energy Star certified and everything. All I had to do was to go get it.
I walked into Home Depot and took a look at what they had as far as air conditioners. The big 24,500 BTU ones were absolutely huge and would never fit in my car. They also required 230 volt and I have 115. the one I was going to get at Lowes was the “Samsung 12,300 BTU Electronic Window Type Air Conditioner with ENERGY STAR®.” Seemed like a sweet ride. All I could seem to find was an 800 BTU air conditioner that was good for a 340FT room. This really sucked. I thought that maybe I could just get two of them and split them up among rooms. I put one in my cart and strolled into the garden center.
Gee…what happened to all the good trees? All gone. Boy, people sure do wipe these places out. I guess it is a good thing because that means people are intelligent enough to plant trees. Doesn’t help me out any though. I left there and went back to the air conditioner section again. I looked to my left and discovered all the air conditioners that I missed before. I noticed a nice LG 11,500 BTU air conditioner that covered about 550FT, so I was in pretty decent shape with that one. I plopped it in my cart and left.
Well, today Laura and I just got home from her parent’s house and turned on the new AC. Boy is it nice to cool the place off just a bit. I feel totally guilty, but we are going to keep it to a bare minimum. Also, Paul and I are hopefully going to hit the other Home Depot tomorrow to look through the slim pickins of trees again.
When I wrote a post yesterday talking about Wikipedia and Me, I looked up how to spell the word, “Grandeur.” I knew I would get that one wrong. The way I check a spelling of a word is to type it into either Google search or Yahoo! search.
Well, when I typed it into Google, I came across this very entertaining blog called, “Delusions of Grandeur.” I read some of the posts and thought that someone out there is feeling quite passionate about something and deserved some mad props from my authoritative blog. Now, I am neither endorsing nor condemning what this person writes, I am simply pointing it out.
I, for one, think that Al Gore and Rush Limbaugh should do the Waltz.
When we first moved in, we noticed, and really liked the triangle garden right in front of the house. It was so full of a variety of plants. After we were settled for a bit, reality set in and I decided that this garden was way too full and needed to be cleaned out.
One of the plants that was making the garden so messy looking was Catnip, or Nepeta cataria. I have heard some stuff about the plant, but never learned really all that much about it. Come to find out, it is a very good plant to have around for a variety or reasons.
I like the plant and decided that I would like to keep it around, just not in the front garden. It has a tendency to spread like there is no tomorrow. Since things started to bloom here in the Northeast, I have been pulling the remnance of Catnip out of the front garden and walking it all the way down the backyard and planting it back there. It is seeming to take off well. Apparently, it takes a lot to kill this plant as well.
I have a word of warning to you…if you are planning on planting Catnip in a garden of yours, please beware that this plant spreads via an aggressive root system. If it spreads too far, you will need to pull it out. But remember that it will come up again. Also, if you decide that you don’t want it anymore, it is very difficult to get rid of. So think long and hard before planting Catnip.
