Month: September 2012

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Special Dates Every Year

One of my friends on Facebook posted a sweet tribute to his father, who had passed away 10 years ago today. He mentioned that some dates are always going to have special meanings to him. He listed off a few, like his father’s birthday, his date of death, Christmas, etc. that always evoke memories and make him sad.

I think a lot of us miss people on the major holidays, but I try to remember the special people who have passed on with happy memories and a celebration of their lives. I feel badly for people who dwell on sadness and never get over grief. It is hard, but death is a part of life, and my special dates and memories are good ones.

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Laundry Drama

Now that the glow of a new purchase has worn off, the new washing machine that we bought is starting to bug me. There are a lot of things wrong with it. It works – the clothes get clean. But there are a lot of things about this front loading washer that I hate.

In the first place, the settings do not allow you to select a cycle that just rinses one time and then spins it dry. So, if you open the door and find a puddle of soap suds, you have to run an entire hour long cycle again just to get the excess soap out of that load. That is a waste of water, electricity and time.

Next, the drawer that you pull out to pour in the soap bleach and fabric softener is too high. When a short person is pouring bleach into that drawer, it can very easily splash back right into her eyes. That is extremely painful and dangerous.

Next, the drawer has three channels for adding the liquids and they are very shallow. When pouring any of the soaps, bleach or fabric softeners into their proper channel, it is very common to have a lot of splash into the wrong channel. It really pisses me off to be pouring bleach and have it spill over into the fabric softener channel. That means during the rinse cycle there will be bleach coming out and onto my clothes and that won’t get properly rinsed out. Since there is no separate extra rinse setting, that mean you have to wash the entire load over again.

I hate that it takes a full hour to wash a single load of clothes. It does not matter if the washer is totally full or you have only a handful of undergarments that need to be washed by themselves, it takes an hour. That is way too long – especially for a small load of undergarments. Those should only take about 20 minutes to wash. An hour is way too long.

I hate this washer and hate the so-called engineers who designed it. I would never ever buy a GE front load washing machine again and hate to be stuck with this awful one. If I could sell it and get even half my money back I would rather buy a new washing machine that put up with this crappy one much longer.

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Summer Clearance Bargains

I visited the department stores yesterday and they were all gearing up for the Fall and Winter seasons. I browsed through fall fashion of sweaters and cardigans in oranges and browns and tried on winter boots and scarves. But I’m not exactly ready for the fall season. I like summer and wish it can last forever.

On the way out of the mall, I happened to stop by a Home store. The Home store put their summer goods on clearance. They had nice patio furniture, grills, and fun summer home accessories at half-price so I took the opportunity to make my summer last longer by purchasing some summer items. I decorated my house with blue throw pillows, breezy curtains, seashell candles and voila, I feel like summer days are not quite over – usually we have nice weather until November. Then we never know from one day to the next what temperatures to expect. It can be 70 degrees one day and then 36 degrees the next!