That title might be a bit strong, I don’t know. But I liked the alliteration, and it’s closer than disaster. There have just been a couple of irritations over the last couple of weeks.
First up, our washing machine. The machine came with the house, because we went with the in-built appliances option on our new build.
Shiny, huh? That was when it was very new. The washing machine is in the cupboard to the right of the three drawers. It was an Electrolux washer-dryer, which makes sense because there definitely isn’t room for a tumble in the kitchen. But the integrated condenser dryers (that I’ve used anyway) make you have to take a guess at how long you need to dry things for, so most of the time I just end up with a pile of very hot, still quite soggy clothes.
So when Mum offered her Miele dryer, we took that and stuck it in the garage. It’s around 14 years old now, we’ve had it for maybe 7 of those, and I believe Mieles are supposed to be good for 20 years so there’s some life in it yet. Anyway, long story short, we never used the integrated dryer.
Apparently this means that some sensor doesn’t get dried regularly enough, and occasionally the washing machine won’t turn on. This is a little frustrating, honestly. I think turning on when asked is pretty much the bare minimum to expect from an appliance. And when I’m trying to time my washing to get maximum input from my solar panels and it takes 3 days for the machine to decide to turn on? Yeah, it’s new washing machine time.
So that was delivered on Wednesday. I went for a new Bosch, with a slightly larger load size so I can wash less often – we have too many clothes, we may as well use them. We paid extra so that the nice delivery man had to deal with fixing that cupboard door, too. We did it for the dishwasher, this was going to be harder. Sometimes (if you’re lucky enough to be able to) it’s better to just pay. I haven’t tried the full eco mode yet, but I will. Oh yes. I will.
Then on Thursday we woke up to no internet. This is a bit tricky, being a work-from-home software developer. The router was showing a funny colour, which googling told me meant it was fine but there was no internet connection. So I opened the box with the modem in and there was not a single light on. I spent around 30 minutes on live chat with someone from BT who confirmed that it was the modem that was the problem, and that they’d send an engineer out the next day to fix or replace it.
Fortunately, I stopped being stubborn and bought a contract with an absurd amount of data for my mobile. And I’m signed up to a local co-working space, so I could go work there for the day. The engineer showed up at the start of the 8am-1pm slot I booked. He swapped out the power lead and boom, we were connected again. It was a minor inconvenience really, in the grand scheme of things. Didn’t even cost us anything.
So yeah. Two inconveniences in the week where hurricane Ian has caused major catastrophes in Cuba, Florida and North Carolina. I guess life’s not going so badly really.
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