I missed my blogaversary

How silly of me! It was actually on the 17th. I guess that my only excuse is that I am a wee bit busy right now. In fact, I'm soon off to the college to do some more weaving. And I have one more scarf in mind before I'm done. But isn't it always that way? "Just one more, just one more".
And to calm Bill, I am going to tell you a short tale about how he did a MacGyver and fixed my washing machine.

A few weeks ago, I was doing laundry when the washer started making a nasty loud buzzing, humming, grinding sort of noise. Not good. I turned it on and off a few times in the simple hope that it would miracolusly start to work again. No such luck. I look for the owners manuel. I know that we have it. Somewhere. No luck.. So I do the next best thing. Google. I actually find a thread on a "fix it" site a about my type of washer filling with water and not draining, or not spinning. According to the site, all you have to do is take the front panel off the machine, which I managed, slip the clamps off, and remove the "bobby pins and coins" from the impeller motor. Or impeller drive. Or what ever. The impeller pump (if I am correct) is the part that removes the water from the washing machine. Very important. Especially on a front loading washer. In any case, I took one look at the clips that I was suppose to "slip" off and thought "not likely". These are huge spring type clips that were designed to hold back the waters of the Nile. I suppose that I COULD have gotten them off, but there would have been a lot of swearing, some skinned knuckles, and the potential to break something. Having decided a long time ago that there are somethings that I just won't do, even if I might be able to do them, I decided to wait for Bill. In the mean time, I emptied as much water out of the machine as I could and then started supper. When supper was out of the way, we got down on all fours and peered into the bottom of the machine. Bill got to work. He removed the clamps, flooded the kitchen with the water that I could not get out, I ran for towels and mopped up the excess. I had some errand to run at this point and left. I come back a bit later, to a proud Bill who had put the machine back together after having removing a few misceleanous things (including an underwire) from the pump. We gave it a test run. It filled with water (no surprise) and then started to make that horrible noise again. Bad. Very bad. Machine gets taken apart again. More water on the floor (it needed to be washed any way) and the impeller motor was removed again. After some careful tests we discover that the impeller pump still ran, but stopped spinning when it was called into service. Some small piece inside had worn so that the motor was shifting a bit on it's shaft. And the matter of a millimeter was the difference between it running and not running. Bill was thinking of attaching some metal clip to the mount and having it push on the end of the motor when I suggested a split washer (although, at the time, I didn't know what it was called) be put on the shaft and it would keep the part inside that had to spin, in the position that it was able to spin in (are we confused yet?) There was no split washer in the house, but Bill did have an old pen that he had in his "Useful Materials" box. Or pile. It was the right diamater and was a bit flexable. He cut it to the right size, slipped it on....and.... it worked! And it has kept on working for about 3 weeks now. I am sure that the little piece from the pen will wear out at some point and have to be replaced, but I have plans on going to the machine repair shop just down the street and picking up a few split washers to have on hand for when it does. Bill says that he has lots of pens to use, but the thought of having to take apart the machine every time the last piece wears out seems a little excessive. He also wants me to stop complaining about his "useful materials" that he keeps on hand. I'm not sure that I can until they are in a barn or shed or somewhere that I don't have to deal with them. In any case, thanks to Bill for his ability and knowledge. I'm glad to be living with someone who can pull a MacGyver every now and then.

Make sure you tell him how great he is