Well, crap. My microwave quit on me. I've only had it for 20 years! (No idea how old it was when I got it, though, lol.) Unfortunately, this is not the month for random expenses. I don't have a penny to spare, and next month isn't looking much better. I guess the toaster oven is going to get some extra use for a while.
Accidentally sliced the tip off one of my fingers. Only flesh and I got away with just a dressing, but it f***ing hurt.
@hirundine Now when you write, every word matters more, since every word will be painful to put in place. Pain efficiency?
Ouch. Unfortunately, microwaves (and other white goods) are not built to last these days -- there's a reason why they only have a one-year or two-year warranty. Do you have a grill (or even a George Foreman grill)? A small electrical one would set you back about $50, but it's worth it. Hmm -- grilled cheese sandwiches ... <does a Homer Simpson drool> Ouch! Sorry to hear, hirudine. I hope your finger heals soon.
Well, they used to be. Like I said, this one was well over 20 years old, twice that, I think. The next one probably won't last 5 years.
Sometimes thrift shops and Salvation Army type places will have one for like $10. And now you've got me worried about mine a little bit as I type on my kitchen counter with the microwave right above me. It's kind of old and it's a weird size and it's mounted above the stove. And's it got the hood/vent system built into the underside to take care of the stove. Knowing a thing or three about kitchen setups, the hood vents to my roof and the cabinets around it where all built to accommodate this particular microwave, so when it croaks.... The beauty of home ownership.
My parents' dog passed away this morning. She and I became really good buddies when I lived with my parents a few years ago. I got to spend some time with her over the weekend, and I took some photos for my parents. She was the most anxious creature I've ever met (whippet mix), but she loved fiercely. I will miss that silly puppy. She helped me chase away the loneliness.
Harsh. Hugs from across the pond. Animals find themselves a home in your soul and, when they're gone, leave a wound which takes some healing.
I’m sorry to hear that. Pets are special in that they give such unconditional love. I have a friend whose dog passed away recently. He’s made some photo collages and a painting in honor of her as a way to process his loss. Don’t know if something similar might help you or your parents. *hugs*
I haven’t spoken to a friend in over two months. Another just recently lost one of their parents and they’re okay, but I know how long that grief is. I hope things get better for them. I miss them.
Well, I bitched about my microwave going out while I had no extra money. Perhaps I shouldn't have complained. Now my truck is screwed to the tune of 500 bucks. I drove to get my kid after school. When we got back to the truck, the starter wouldn't do its thing. It just spun like it wasn't attached to anything. fml
Sorry to hear this, Rzero. You're not having a run of good luck, I can see that! I hope you have (or can arrange) alternate transportation...!
Sorry buddy. These things have a way of coming in threes, so hopefully this run is almost over. I've had a bloke on the drive this morning fixing the car windscreen; the other car has just had a leak fixed and a new battery put in (and also needs a new alternator, which will have to wait), so I'm hoping my three are over and done when it comes to cars. I got lucky because the leak wasn't the gasket heads, but it was an entertaining few days filling the coolant up literally every 30 miles on my way to and from work.
For the last year my life has been, essentially, the emotional equivalent of an aircraft cockpit full of smoke, blaring fire alarms and the insistent 'woop woop' of an increasingly distressed TAWS that doesn't realise that pulling up isn't actually an option when the controls won't respond. In the last couple of weeks I have, at least, regained attitude control, but a lot of things have fallen off and something is still on fire. I've started writing again, but find myself embarrassed by what I'd been working on; it's a silly, inconsequential fantasy adventure story of little literary merit that just happens to be important to me because it deals with things that are huge issues in my life: justice and the proper application of the law; environmentalism; my own culture and its history and folklore; survivor guilt; shame and grief stemming from a dire personal failure; the kind of friendship that grows out of shared hardship and adversity; the different kinds of love and what happens when one becomes another; the struggle not to let justified rage turn one into a monster. Reading it back I realise that these things matter to me, very much, but I'm not sure that my silly little adventure story can give them the treatment they need and I daren't show it to anyone I know, because they all seem to expect anything I write to be some sort of great work of literature and they'll be disappointed in me. I can see why they think I'd write that sort of stuff, given my background and their (somewhat inaccurate) mental image of me, but I really like fantasy adventure stories and don't particularly like what gets called 'literature' these days. I have an MA in it, I'm allowed to not like it if I want. I'm also worried that I've put too much of myself into my protagonist, particularly as it's a mystery, so I wrote it in first person to make it easier to keep things hidden from the reader and easier for me to follow his thought processes. He presents himself as calm, unflappable, a little aloof, but always ready with a witty remark when he sees the opportunity, and unfalteringly brave but the aforementioned thought processes include a large amount of the mental equivalent of running round in little circles, waving his arms and shouting 'shitshitshitshit' or else trying to keep certain things stuffed in the cupboard at the back of his head where they belong. I fear that he is thoroughly unlikeable and unsympathetic. Anyway. That's enough from me.
I'm gonna have to put this one story idea I had on the back burner for a bit. I don't want to because I feel as though it was a good idea, the problem is that it's a road trip story. I've seen plenty of road trip stories in movies and cartoons so I know that they can be fun, but I think the main problem for me is that I'm better with stories that take place in one or two set locations. The characters are constantly on the move so it's harder for me to make what I feel is a satisfactory plot. It probably also didn't help that two of the characters constantly snip at each other, six chapters in and they argue in four. There is a plot reason for it but we don't find that out for a really long time. I'm also thinking that I maybe shouldn't have made the theme of the story be about the 5 stages of grief. Anger, depression, and acceptance are easy but denial feels a lot more difficult. There's probably also the underlying fear that the only copies that'll sell are the ones that family and friends buy out of support. I've tried looking up ways to make road trip stories more interesting but doing that either takes me to road trip books or ways to make road trips more fun for kids. I may have lost my temper at Google for that one and called it an idiot. It's not all bad, though. I did get another story idea that's more grounded in terms of locations. Certain plot points and character dynamics are pretty similar to the inspiration, an old show called Tower Prep, so while I untangle that web and try to make it different enough from that, I'll be taking a bit more time with the first story idea, flesh it out a little more. And if I get a flash of inspiration then I'll write it down.
Sometimes you gotta do self-therapy through writing. It sounds a lot like my own project, which began as nothing more than a quickie little idea to blow off the rust (I hadn't written anything in over a decade) and to play around with a lot of deep life knowledge I had developed during the interim. You need to do something to consolidate new levels of philosophical/psychological understanding that put things into a powerful new perspective. I consider my project (among many other things) a way to play around with some deep ideas in what feels like a silly genre environment (but actually includes a lot of much deeper material). As I work with my ideas they take various forms—some more action/adventure and some more semi-literary, but always a mix of the two. And of course that's a thing—there's no hard dividing line between genre and literary. Like yin and yang they often contain elements of each other to varying degrees, or suddenly spin and reveal that what you thought was one reflects the other.
Short answer there is that it's based around a physical destination--wherever the trip is going--but the real journey is what the characters learn about themselves along the way. And the bulk of the word count is usually the whacky people and adventures the characters meet along the way. One good thing about those is that the road trip is perfect vehicle for one-and-done, in-and-out secondary characters that can do anything you want without creating narrative drag or requiring a conclusive arc. They can literally stumble across anything or anyone and it will make sense. If you're in a rut, I'd suggest coming up with some side characters/situations you can throw in there. Stumbling into a biker bar by mistake seems to be a recurring trope. Theme is tough. You can't force it. You can kind of plan it in a very loose sense but the real themes tend to evolve organically from the story. You can get into a lot of trouble trying to fit the story to the theme.
My outdoor spigot/faucet behind the house began leaking around the edge. For a year we simply turned it off inside and ran a hose from the front to water the back garden, but that's kind of tedious, so I called a plumber. He said he could install a new spigot for about $75. But when he came we realized that the folks who built the house almost 60 years ago didn't give a rat's ass about future repairs. The spigot pipe inside the house is right up against the wall and flooring, with other pipes tight around it. There's no easy way to remove the one that's in there, no room to work. So we tried replacing the inner workings of the spigot, but that only made it somewhat better; the water still leaked slightly from another place. Theory is that the pipe is deteriorated somewhere along the way, in a place we can't see. So plumber (a nice guy whom I trust) is working out how much it would cost to cut through the spigot pipe and some of its neighbors and then install the new one, replacing the shut-off valve and rejoining the pipes that had to be cut through, among other things. I dread seeing the figures and the decision I will have to make. If nothing else, I will have to fix it eventually before we sell the house. And it's all so unnecessary.
It probably won't be too bad if it was only $75 originally. They can't straight bypass it altogether? Cut the old line, cap it, and run a new line off a more convenient elbow?
The $75 was to simply reach up, cut the pipe, and attach a new one. Now that's an idea you suggest -- though it's hard to even get in there to cut off the old one, but it could be done, I suppose. You mean a whole new hole in the wall off to one side? That might work, but would require cutting into the siding and all. Of course I'd have to buy a new shutoff as well. Maybe I need to consider a more "sophisticated" plumber. But I'll run it past the one I have.
I'm not a plumber at all, so I'm just spitballing. If they can't actually get to the pipe connected to the spigot, then, no, that probably wouldn't work. I feel your pain though. Here's my plumbing story from a few months back.
