Washer Agitator Filter Took Flight

Today was laundry day, and I did 3 loads because I put off one load from the last laundry day, and a bunch of towels needed to be done as well.

Apparently this was too many loads for the poor washer to take. The first load went ok. The second load was sounding kind of odd, where during the spin cycle it was shaking a whole lot (for a load that's not as heavy as the first). I stopped it to check that it wasn't off balance, and everything looked good.

When the third load started it seemed fine, but I had gone down to the basement when the spin cycle was going and didn't hear the really awful clanging until I came back upstairs. It stopped shortly when the cycle ended and when I opened the lid, I found the agitator filter had detached and scrapped along the edge so much it left plastic pieces all along the well opening.

I took the part to Sears and asked how much it would cost to replace it. The part itself isn't too bad, but not knowing whether the original clanging was indicative of a larger problem, and why there's this oily residue all over the place, tells me I might need a technician to come out and make sure there's nothing else wrong. Given that will cost a pretty penny, after the part is added, it's already half the cost of a new front load washer.

The unfortunate thing is, I currently have a connected stacked washer/dryer, so I can't replace the washer without replacing the dryer. Sigh.... I guess it's time to buy a new set of washer and dryer. This time, I'm going for separate washer and dryer so they can be independently serviced and replaced.

The Minion Family

So I went back and created a whole family of Despicable Me Minions. Every single one of them has a different combination of hair, eyes, mouth, clothing, and arm positions. I don't believe I repeated any. Here they are in alphabetical order.

Baby Eye

Bewildered Eye

Dancer

Dopey

Inspector Eye

Miss L-eye-lac

Mr. Boss

Newton

Sleepy Eye

Tool

Despicable Me Minions

A whole bunch of us went to see Despicable Me at the school movie showing last night, since we all managed to miss it when it came out in the theaters. The most fun were the minions!

So I went searching for fun minion artifacts and found a Minion Maker, where you can make your own minion! Here's a bewildered one I just made. Sort of representative of my psychological state at work at the moment. =P

I'm sure I'll be going back and making some more funky and fun ones if I get time to play around with it more.

Life Without Blackberry

Original image from crackberry.com

It's been 5 days since I turned in my blackberry and I'm uncertain how I feel about life without it.

The fact is I've had that continuously buzzing creature within a 5 ft vicinity of me for about 3 years. The only time in recent memory that I can recall not having it near me is on my trip to Mexico, and perhaps my trip to Hawaii as well. Other than that, it has served as my access to the world without a computer, holder of directions (I email Google Map directions to myself and have my Gmail open to the directions when I'm going somewhere) and as rescue navigator (though only through Google Maps cause the models I had didn't have GPS) when I get lost, which is more times than I would like to admit.

Most of those things can be mitigated with some planning (i.e. print directions before I leave the house). It's not horrible to not have access to my email 24/7. Kind of a nice separation, actually. However the one thing that has proven slightly difficult to manage is when there are back to back meetings. For 3 years I didn't have to worry about it because the blackberry would alert me to the next meeting, and where it will take place. I can also get instant updates to those meetings because Outlook was on the blackberry, and if the meeting got moved, I would know immediately.

I already encountered this on Friday at work, where I was heading out to my welcome lunch, heading directly to a meeting after, and then going to another one after that. I had the foresight to bring all the notebooks with me to lunch, and write down the location of the meetings on my notebook before leaving for lunch. But if I had back to back meetings all day long, this would be much more difficult.

Still, this might be manageable if I truly am going to back to back meetings and had my laptop with me. I would have access to my email wherever I went (assuming the battery lasted all day long). It's not pretty, but it can be done.

To throw a curve ball in the mix, cell reception is bad inside the buildings, such that it drains the power of my phone if I leave it on during the day. So I turn it off by the time I get into my office, which means I don't even have my cell to keep time. Now this is interesting, because I truly have not been without my cell near me in years, except for when I was in Mexico! Now I have to find my wrist watch. I don't even know if I have a working one lying around. I might need to rely on the Windows 7 clock widget or something crazy, assuming again, I have my laptop with me at all times.

This of course, would be mitigated (somewhat) if I have a smart phone device that is hooked up to my work email and calendar. Not sure how that resolves the low signal / battery issue though. So I am going to try to tough it out without a smart phone for awhile.

For a person who works in a high tech industry I'm surprisingly without gadgets. I have a Gen 3 iPod (which I only got used from a friend after my Gen 1 killed itself), I don't have a GPS, and my personal phone is a good old feature flip phone. I only recently bought a netbook (first major gadget since I purchased my digital camera in 2005). So I wonder, now that I've been with a blackberry for 3 years, how long I can go without it. We'll just have to wait and see.

Be Margaret

This pic says it all! =D

Original is a collage of celebrity athletes on the adidas miCoach website's homepage. As a going away lunch celebration, one of my colleagues, Ryan, who is obviously a very talented visual designer, photoshoped me into the banner. The crazy thing is all the photos except for 2 were taken during the lunch. That's some fast fingers! :)

Here's the original for comparison.

Riding Reno

That's me riding Reno! She's 21 and full of life. The whole ride she was trying to gallop and wanted to turn in different directions than the rest of the group. She's the biggest horse that I rode on this trip. I think Elvis from my first ride in Phoenix was larger. Yesterday I rode Val, which is all black and very slow. It's all good. My ride count now totals 4 and I wish I could do this every morning. But for now I'm glad I have had the chance to ride as many times as I have. :-)

In Ottawa..... Illinois!

No, still didn't leave the country. I love how most town names here make you think you are though. :-) This statue and fountain are in Washington Square where Lincoln and Douglas had their first debate for a US Senate seat. The first time Lincoln said all men are created equal and it was central to his argument.

Riding Casper and Avoiding Biting Lady Bugs

No, not the ghost. Although I can see how you might be tempted to think that given it's that time of the year. I got to ride a pretty horse name Casper today on the trail ride right on the Fox River resort property. The weather was great for it too. It's probably 75 out, and there's a nice breeze along all the time. I got on the 2:30 PM ride so it wasn't in the dead heat of high noon. I will definitely do it again tomorrow, and the day after, and possibly even the day after that if I can get away with it.

So the one weird thing is the lady bugs here bite. That's right, you read that right. They BITE. Those things are mean and they swarm! I'll find out later just how many chunks they took out of me.

The embarrassing thing is I wore a v-neck tank top today, and they kept going down my chest. I had to reach into my shirt more than once to get the bug out of my tank. Good thing the other riders were mostly women or girls. If I can stand the heat, I am definitely wearing a long sleeve tee tomorrow.

In the mean time, I'm going to go enjoy my jacuzzi after I figure out what to do for dinner. :)

Chicago

The primary reason for coming out this way was for Bill and Yelena's wedding. They held it in the Architectural Artifacts building, which is a very cool venue. It was great to see lots of familiar faces from our days back in the dorm, even though we're in all parts of the country now. I'll get around to uploading all the photos later when I have a better internet connection.

It was actually rainy on Saturday, the day of the wedding. I managed to get myself up to the John Hancock Observatory. It was worth it because the wind was blowing hard enough that the rain was going side ways up there (94 floors up). I almost thought it was snow given the way it was floating, but it was only rain. Crazy physics!

Of course Chicago is known for all the great architecture. I have a ton of pics, but it'll be too much to show here. This is the Cloud Gate in Millennium Park. Everyone here calls it the Silver Bean. I'm on the left side of the photo, wrapped up in a hat and scarf because it was actually kinda cold.

Visions of Eternity by Salvador Dai

One of the coolest things was going to the Art Institute of Chicago. True to all my friends' and colleagues' recommendations, it has the largest amount of Impressionist art I have ever encountered in one place. I took many photos (totally allowed) of many great works by Monet, Renoir, and Degas. Additionally there were a lot of great Dali work like the one at right. The "Melted Clock" wasn't here, but it was still great. I also bought myself a very expensive canvas tote, but it had The Gashly Tinycrumbs by Edward Gorey on it and I couldn't pass it up.

I went to the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum as well. It was really cool to see one of the most complete T-Rex fossils in the world (Sue). It looks so real! I was definitely in a Jurassic Park moment here.

I learned a bunch about the world on this trip to the Field Museum. I learned that there were actually 5 major mass extinctions, not just the one 65 million years ago when the dinosaurs were wiped out. I'm still wondering how they figured those other ones out given the first one occurred something like 430 million years ago (there abouts). It's amazing what we can learn these days through science and technology.

I got to do a little comparison between my own feet and that of a dinosaur. I think I would have been road kill within 30 seconds if I lived in that era. That's just ridiculous!

All in all, it was awesome to see the city. I finally got a sense of where East was by the end of my 3 day stint there, and then it's off back to Norway (boonies) for some R&R before heading to Indiana.

In Norway...... Illinois! :-)

Arrived without getting lost just before midnight. I've forgotten how the lodges are set up and am glad to see the jacuzzi in the room. My turtle is wearing his new gift from Slava in front of the nicely folded 4 leaf clover towels. I'm ready for a good night's sleep!