Today is Sunday, June 11 and there are 165 days until Thanksgiving.  You should still be able to get a good spot to watch the parade, if you go now.  Today we remember the birthdays of Charles Fabry, Jacques Cousteau and Gene Wilder.  On this day in 1517 Sir Thomas Pert reached Hudson Bay, in 1936 the Presbyterian Church of America was founded at Philadelphia and in 1959 the Postmaster General banned DH Lawrence’s book, Lady Chatterley’s Lover.  In Hawaii it is King Kamehameha I Day, in Massachusetts it is Children’s Day and in the US it is National Corn on the Cob Day and National German Chocolate Cake Day.

Recently, I found that when I ran my dishwasher, water would run out onto the kitchen floor.  Because of my extensive DIY experience I was able to immediately diagnose the problem as a leak.  I further surmised that it had something to do with the dishwasher.  By now you have been able to tell that I have a keen grasp of the obvious.  It has always been my belief that I should start with the simplest and/or least expensive solution first, so I called a plumber.  Understand, I was pretty sure what the outcome would be, but there was always the chance that I was wrong.

As it turned out, I was not.  The plumber came in, asked me a few questions and told me the problem was the dishwasher.  He explained what I would have been seeing if it was a plumbing issue and I was not seeing that.  Because the dishwasher was over ten years old, he said it was not surprising.  I remember a time when you bought an appliance and knew it would last forever.  My parents had a refrigerator in their kitchen that was easily 50 years old and worked quite well … but I digress.

Nowadays, you are lucky if an appliance lasts five to seven years.  They are built with planned obsolescence.  They are made to fall apart after a few years.  To make things even worse, after a couple years, you can’t find parts to fix anything or if you do they cost a fortune.  Of course, you generally have to have a repairman come in to do the work for you.  He usually is ready to do the job, but needs a couple more things.  Now the repair has stretched out for a week or so and is more expensive.  The ultimate goal is to have you simply buy a new appliance.

The plumber I had suggested just that.  He explained that it would be a good idea because of the age, etc.  I had anticipated that this would be the likely solution, so I decided to be proactive and started looking at dishwashers over the previous couple days.  I went to two different stores and found several models that I thought might be good choices.  What I found interesting was that in both stores, I spent a fair amount of time looking at the choices and discussing various features with Barbara.  We opened them, checked the racks and silverware trays, looked to see if the top rack was adjustable and so on.  At no time did a salesperson come over and offer to tell us about any of the models we were looking at.

I came home and got on the computer to see the reviews on the models I was considering.  The first thing I discovered was that every model I had looked at, initially, had drawbacks.  I suppose I could have done some research before going to the stores, but I thought I knew what to look for.  Apparently not.  Having found that out, I decided to go to the store and find one that would give me the features that I wanted and wouldn’t require me to take out a home equity loan to pay for it.

We went back to the store and started looking again, avoiding the ones that I had found were not good.  That allowed us to narrow the field considerably.  The next thing I tried to do was ignore the hyped-up names for features.  Names like the “storm fall” washer system or the “cyclone drier” or the “devours anything” food grinder.  I just needed to be sure it would clean the dishes, pots and pans, not shatter the glassware and not leak for the next ten years.  I found one and I will let you know how it goes.

When the time came to actually order the item, I had to find the person who worked in the area.  I went over to the desk where he was sitting and he spent the next ten minutes typing information into the computer.  Next he went and got a pile of papers from a printer, had me sign in a couple spots and then handed me part of the pile and told me to go to the register to pay.  What bothers me is that I will not get any commission for having sold the dishwasher to myself and he will get credit for the sale.  Oh well, I guess he figures he will be obsolete sometime soon, anyway, so why work too hard.

This week our fact tells us that unless you have a doctor’s note, it is illegal to buy ice cream after 6 PM in Newark, NJ.  I cannot think of a reason why, but someone thought it was necessary.  The bigger questions are why a doctor’s note and how to get the doctor to write the note?  Is it covered under insurance and will it be covered if the new government plan is put into place?  Is the need for ice cream considered a pre-existing condition?  I think it would be simpler to just buy it earlier in the day and avoid the need for the note.