On the Homebody Front

A few things to update you on: the carpet shampooer and the refrigerator. (You can already tell how scintillating this entry is going to be, can't you?)

Yes, all the recent changes seem to be of a disturbingly domestic nature. The first improvement is the repair of our carpet shampooer. This has been an ongoing saga, leading back almost a year. I took the thing out last June to clean the carpets (to work off the depression of being recently laid off) and after about 10 minutes the water stopped squirting. This was followed by disassembly, wherein I cleaned all the cat hair out and inadvertently inverted a valve while reassembling the machine. The valve broke, and I had to order a replacement. It arrived in August and still no water flow.

In November of last year, my sister Kittie and her husband Dave were visiting [see Dec. 1, 2009, entry: "'Tis the Season to Be Dealt With]. Dave's one of those natural-born handymen, and after connecting the vent over the stove, I mentioned the problem with this machine. He located the inverted valve and corrected the situation. Still the machine did not work. After a little searching on the Internet, I found a certified repair shop in Arcadia, just south of Pasadena. We took the machine in last Saturday for repairs.

On the way home from Arcadia, we decided to stop off at Pacific Sales (an appliance store) to check out refrigerators. This is a really great retailer, since they actually have salespeople on the floor who know the merchandise and are up front about being on commission. Our current fridge was 25 years old, ran most of the time and made funny sounds while doing so. So we checked out potential replacements and found out that both the state and the City of Pasadena had rebate programs for appliance replacement that were expiring in mid-May. Doing the math, we realized that, with the store's discounts and the rebates, we would be able to purchase a new refrigerator for half price.

I checked online for different manufacturers and reviews of the various refrigerators we looked at, and I ran across some really cool advertising art images from the past that marketed fridges. Here's one from the 1960s, where a futuristic housewife has cloned herself. Why she is wearing a bubble space helmet, I'm not sure. I don't think the men who did the advertising in mid-20th century really knew how to relate to the concept of a "modern" woman, so they put her in space clothes. Anyway, look at that avocado-green job: that's the look of the future, all right!

On Wednesday afternoon the repair guy called and said the problem was a frozen pump: we had not cleaned out the machine after using it, and the soap solution had solidified inside the pump. Repairs were $80. So the next day we drove down and picked up the cleaner. Driving back, Steve looked at me without saying a word, and I replied "You want to buy that refrigerator, don't you?" He nodded, we stopped by Pacific Sales and we did.

The refrigerator arrived on Friday, and the delivery guys had to take its doors off to get it into the house. They also had to remove all of the drawers in the kitchen to get enough clearance, but we made it. Now I open the refrigerator and feel like I live in the 21st century. It has a french-door refrigerator on top and a huge drawer freezer on the bottom. And I haven't heard it running since I first plugged it in.

Today (Sunday) we pulled out the newly repaired cleaner and shampooed the carpets downstairs. It'll take another go-round to really get them clean, but they are looking mighty spiffy compared to this morning. The cats hated the entire process, of course, because there's nowhere to walk that isn't damp. Marcel hates the vacuum cleaner, and the shampooer is bigger and just as noisy, so he split for upstairs. Patty didn't seem to mind the machine at all, unless it was coming directly for her, then she'd move to what she considered safer ground and continue watching the process.

So this picture gives you an idea of how I feel this evening, having been so intensely domestic for the last several days. (Who could resist this pink and mint-green kitchen?) It's been quite a while since we did anything to fluff our nest, and these are both solid moves, especially since we are contributing to the sales of durable goods and the local economy. Things are good.

On the school front, I have finished my Adobe studies of Dreamweaver, and this is my final week at school. It should take about a week each for the Photoshop and Illustrator books, and then I'll start taking the practice exams for each subject. I'm hoping to celebrate the anniversary of my unemployment by taking the certification exams. I already applied to a job at NBC-Universal, but I'm not holding my breath, since they want someone with an advertising background. We shall see.