January 30, 2003
Dear Everyone:
Did I mention the dishwasher? Sunday before last, I was doing the usual weekly chores, like dishes and laundry and grocery shopping. In fact, I was upstairs, changing bed linens, when I suddenly realized that the dishwasher was making way, way too much noise, even for a dishwasher.
I flew downstairs to the kitchen, fully expecting to see smoke pouring out of the base of the dishwasher, possibly from an overheated motor. There was no smoke, but plenty of noise. I stopped the dishwasher. Started it again. Still making a god-awful noise (indeed, the gods would have been in awe). Shut it down completely and prepared to finish washing a week’s worth of dishes by hand.
Since the dishwasher was just getting ready to run the rinse cycle anyway, this meant rinsing the dishes, etc., under the kitchen tap, then placing them back on the dishwasher racks to dry. I was pretty busy the rest of Sunday and didn’t have time Monday morning, so it was after work on Monday before I could log onto the home warranty service to report the problem.
The home warranty service is something the house came with for the first year after I bought it. It was a guarantee from the seller that the house wouldn’t fall apart for at least a year. After that, I continued the subscription. It costs a few hundred dollars, but covers nearly everything including wiring, plumbing and appliances. Back in November, I had no less than two plumbers in to fix problems with the kitchen and bathroom sinks; and all it cost me was the standard co-payment of $35.00.
The repairman called Wednesday night and we arranged for him to come by Friday morning. It was a fairly easy thing for me to work in “Pleasanton” that day. (Have laptop, will travel.) It took him all of about 3 seconds to listen to the dishwasher and diagnose the problem as “the pump is gone”. Then he went off to order a new pump and I went back to work.
As of this evening, I haven’t heard from him, so I’m assuming the pump hasn’t arrived yet. In the meantime, I’m washing dishes by hand. When you consider that it usually takes me a week to fill the dishwasher, (and sometimes another week go get around to emptying it) there’s usually less than half a dozen things to clean at any given time. So it’s not exactly the end of the world.
In other news…
One of the national office warehouse chains is convinced that I’m a small business owner. They may have gotten that impression from the fact that one day I walked in and bought two ergonomically-correct office chairs, complete with plastic floor shields. And some other stuff. Ergo, every so often, their computer sends me a special discount. And, because I had something delivered to my old office in “Livermore”, they generally send the same discount to both “Livermore” and my home.
When this happens, I usually drag “Jeannie” into the warehouse to buy stuff she needs for her office, since she really is a small business owner. Last week, she saved $30 by purchasing a little over $100 worth of goods. And I picked up some more self-sealing envelopes, some miniature legal pads and a nifty desk organizer to go with my home PC. Then we both had work to do for the rest of the weekend, so no movies.
As for the two chairs I bought? One was for my home PC. The other is in front of my makeup table in the bedroom. Who says you don’t have to be ergonomically correct to do your hair and apply makeup? Not my back.
And at work…
A particularly large and juicy plum landed on my plate last week. It seems That Other Company, with which we merged last year, kept all its “winks” eggs in one basket. In other words, their “winks” department was centralized. Company, however, decentralized some years ago (just in time for the last records destruction review, as it happens). This means that all the legacy TOC boxes that were assigned to their central “Winks” department are now being charged to the Corporate “Winks” Department.
The head of said department suddenly realized he’s been paying for boxes that should rightly be paid for by the relevant Operating Company’s “winks” departments. So he asked for a listing of the pertinent boxes.
When the list topped 40,000 boxes, he asked for help. That’s what I’m going to be doing: Determining the correct owners of the boxes. The “Winks” Department has indicated that they realize this is going to take a lot of time and they don’t mind paying the charges for me to do it for them.
And I don’t mind doing it either. They’re located in “Pleasanton”, much closer to home than our new base office in “Pleasant Hill”, and they’ve offered a visitor’s desk and computer for the duration. And it never hurts to come to the attention of people high up in the company.
Unless you screw up, of course.
Love, as always,
Pete
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