Or you can simply look down the page.
Let’s see, I was pretty happy with myself that I just purchased a couch. I know, but I have to be happy of something going good for once. I should have known better. I finally break down, I finally say hey I can make a purchase and then something needs to break. Better yet, a couple of things just so slap you on the back of the head a bit.
Anyway, Sunday comes, Grandma leaves back for the homestead. My wife goes upstairs and comes down and asks “Hey it’s awfully cold up there, what do you have it set on?” I’m thinking, 72 like every other part of this house. I like every other man go upstairs and check it out for myself, and yeah it’s pretty freaking cold. It’s actually 67, but set at 72. Downstairs, it still says 72 but nothing appears to be running in the middle of summer. This ain’t good. So I inevitably do the man thing of play with the thermostats which did no good and then see if something was wrong with the fuse box, and still nothing.
On Monday, I call around and then get someone who can come on Tuesday. My family decides to sleep upstairs on Monday night, air mattress and all while I take the bed. I know I should offer, but at 46, I honestly can’t do air mattresses anymore (like someone would have to roll me down the stairs in this case). Anyway, Tuesday comes and the guy arrives at the house. I show him to the attic (mind the old TV boxes and Christmas stuff), and let him poke around the unit. After about 15 or 20 minutes, he comes back and says that the dampers were bad. Dampers basically control air flow and in this case the downstairs one was constantly closed and the upstairs one was constantly open. Hence why it felt like my house was at two sides of the world. Furthermore, I could benefit from replacing the dump (which also helps with air flow) to something a little more modern. For now, he just banged on it and that caused the downstairs to open. Those are technical terms.
Anyway, the next couple of nights were okay but upstairs was still pretty frigid (it had calmed down to about 69) right up until they replaced the dampers and dump on Thursday afternoon. They did do a great job, it’s been noticeably cooler and the AC hasn’t needed to kick on as much since then. Of course, my finances are now in pain. And the pain did not stop there either. Later that night, the vacuum cleaner decided to break. We have a quite old Hoover that has lasted about twelve years. I remember sitting on the floor of my old house picking out cat hairs from this thing (back when I still had a cat), that’s how old it is. So I guess it was time. Thankfully I had a couple of Amazon gift cards I was saving for a rainy day (birthday/Christmas) that helped to soften the blow but it was still frustrating to say the least.
So, my wife tends to sell things that my son no longer needs on Facebook marketplace. Most of these items are $10, $25, maybe a little more, and I really had not paid it any attention. A couple of weeks ago, my wife asked if I wanted to sell my television which I was no longer using (not as old as the vacuum cleaner, but it was a few years old) on Facebook. I said sure, why not. I think I might have been better off selling it along the side of the road. Okay it wasn’t that bad. But the topper was we believed we had a buyer at one point early on and they wanted to meet somewhere in the middle. Well that middle was as they decided, the Waffle House. If that wasn’t bad enough, they didn’t believe our pictures of it working online was doing it justice so they wanted to bring along an extension cord and hook it up in the Waffle House so they could see it in action. Right. This was going bad to worse and I asked my wife very nicely to stop dealing with the person.
Sadly the person decided to keep harassing my wife and said that because we pulled out it somehow ruined a family outing. Eventually it subsided and we kept trying to sell it to other interested folks. Finally, we did find another buyer and even sent them an additional picture of it in action to make sure we didn’t have any more “Waffle House” suggestions. We met at a Costco, exchanged money and TV and that was that. The morale of the story? Facebook marketplace is only slightly better than a garage sale (which I will never do again). At least the second person was on the ball, and it was very appreciated.
Well, I’m going to actually end the column there, I know I forgot to talk about Prince’s newish album, but I probably want to give it another listen before I give a formal review.
Enjoy.
