I had to get up this morning and take Min’s car into Jiffy Lube to get an oil change and a radiator coolent change.
Our Jiffy Lube isn’t able to get Mobil ONE regularly anymore. What a pain that is likely to turn out to be. We loved being able to go right over there and getting our Mobil ONE without having to make an appointment or anything. Now we are, most likely, going to have to switch to a normal garage for our oil changes which will be a lot more of a hassle. JL is going to try to get us the oil but apparently the local store is not allowed to do their own ordering and their corporate bosses are not willing to let them know whether or not they can have the oil that their customers want. So we will have to start calling down there and seeing if they have gotten it yet or we will just have to go elsewhere. I can’t believe that it is worth losing their highest paying customers over corporate versus store internal political issues.
There is snow on the ground and Oreo’s skin problems are going away again. We are totally convinced that he has a grass allergy and that that is what makes him itch so badly. He is going to really enjoy winter, I think.
I finally wrapped up getting all of the old SGL Podcast shows uploaded to the Internet Archive this morning and was able to clear the old ones off of Min’s desktop. That will help a lot. Her machine was filling up so quickly. It was out of control. Now I am working on backing up our one Linux desktop that we have in the basement so that I can get it removed from service and moved on to other things. Always some project or other going on.
Dominica went to class this morning and was very happy to be able to drive on her new Nokian tires. She is very relieved to have her car safe to drive again.
Dad came over around 4:00 and we took our Christmas pictures with the puppy. It was kind of sad because originally we had been hoping to have figured out a way that we could have had Mr. Humphries in the picture but he was gone by the time we actually got around to taking the picture. Overall, though, we think that the pictures turned out pretty well. I will post the ones that didn’t make the cut to Flickr once I get a chance.
After taking care of the pictures dad looked at what could be done to fix the dryer that has never really worked. We were all sitting around in the living room talking about problems with the dryer when Dominica decided that it was finally time, after over two years of having the dryer not work, to admit that when she hooked up the dryer that she had put an old pair of pantyhose over the vent thinking that it would keep lint out of the duct work because someone had told her that. Dad and my eyes got really big as we realized how blessed we had been to not have had the house burn down. We knew right away why the dryer wasn’t working properly. We decided to deal with it later but boy did we all have a laugh when we realized that all of this time, over two years in fact, that that was all that the problem was. Dominica was under the impression that I had been around when the dryer was hooked up but I wasn’t. Unfortunately it was hooked up right around the time of our wedding and SGL was a little lean at the time because of everything going on so we know when the units were delivered but we don’t know exactly when they were hooked up or who was with Dominica when she did it.
Everyone but me was tired of the Omega so we went down to the “Ames” plaza and got the buffet at the Shanghai. They really do have a great buffet. Nothing to blow your socks off but all of the food is good, the price is right, the service is really friendly and there is a decent selection. I have a hard time believing that they are making a profit down there. It is never crowded. Maybe I just always go at the wrong time.
We came home and Dominica and I set to taking the dryer out and seeing what the situation was like behind it. I have never been back there before so it was all new to me. Sure enough, the pantyhose that had been stretched over the dryer exhaust was completely filled with lint and had been forced about four or five inches down into the next pipe all packed full of lint. Then I had to pull out about eighteen more inches of lint that had built up in the pipe in front of it. There sure wasn’t any air at all getting down to the actual exhaust pipe. The pressure had built up behind the dryer enough to cause it to separate the duct that went into the wall so the dryer was venting, as much as it could, all over the floor. The floor was covered in a layer of lint that had obviously been in water as well. So we cleaned everything up and removed the pantyhose. It was all very funny since the house hadn’t actually burned down. We put the dryer back in place and decided to give it a test run.
The first load of laundry that Dominica did in the dryer took only fifty minutes to dry on the medium heat setting. Previously a load of laundry would take approximatly four hours on high heat to be able to get it dry. Yes, four hours. Boy is that going to make a difference in our house. I can’t believe that no one mentioned the pantyhose in the last two years. Dominica kept telling me that she was sure that she had hooked up the dryer incorrectly but I couldn’t figure out what could possibly have been done wrong as long as the dryer was connected to the pipe going out of the house.
Dad is still planning on working on the dryer venting system either Friday or Saturday. The plan is to take the vent from the dryer and instead of having it snake downward through the basement, across over half the length of the basement and then back up to go outside, we are going to have it go up from the dryer (hot air rises you know, as does water vapor) and go just a few feet forward and vent into the garage. It will make the garage a little dustier but that isn’t too big of a deal. One of the benefits is, though, that we will heat the garage a little bit which will help to reduce our heating costs in the tiniest way during the winter months by warming that one wall. Since that one wall is a major cold wall in the house it might actually help a little. During the warm months we keep the window in the garage open so it is no big deal because the air changes out in there pretty rapidly. We will never notice a difference.
I can’t decide what is wrong with our Chia herb garden. The marjoram is growing great and the chives seem to be okay. But the cilantro and the dill are just about dead. They have all been treated the same. Maybe they are more susceptilble to the cold.
After we took care of all of that we decided to go down to the theatre for a change and watch Bring It On which I haven’t seen in almost three years now. That used to be one of the most popular movies when we lived in Ithaca but I have never owned a copy of it until this week. We then watched an episode of Dark Angel Season One. That show is okay. Nothing special. It definitely has the feel of being a super low budget Canadian show made in Vancouver. There is just a feel you get from low budget shows from that town. I would put money on it being from there. It totally looks like a show from the 80’s or early 90’s like Silk Stalkings. And the credits are supoer low budget too like they were from a college student’s film project. The whole show is just cheap. But it isn’t bad. The storyline is marginally interesting. Min was really tired and has to work tomorrow so she went to bed after one episode. She has all ready watched them all so they don’t hold her interest that much. I haven’t seen them yet so it isn’t so bad for me. I stayed up and watched one more episode before going upstairs to work on the podcasts for the evening.