This weekend I did something that proudly puts our household firmly into the middle of the 80’s: I installed a microwave.  This is one of those awesome contraptions/appliances that heats up food in a matter of minutes and allows us to defrost meat if we’ve had one of those boneheaded days where we forgot in the morning to get out food for the evening that we froze last January.  In essence we’re in shape now to save money on eating out because we blew the frozen meat schedule.  I cannot tell you how many times we’ve been low on pantry items, low on other non-pantry items and then had the meat not be defrosted.  It took me until this month to figure out that a microwave, which is not as expensive as a dishwasher, could save us money in the eating out department.

This isn’t revolutionary by any stretch, but we’ve been living without a microwave for 3.5 years now and so having one kinda feel cool and funny.  Various things get hot quickly in the microwave instead of dirtying up several pots and pans, which means I may not have to run the dishwasher as often, or wash as many dishes as often.  Its funny to think how much we’ve been spending on some things because of the fact we didn’t have a microwave.

I actually ended up having to do the following, in case too much information is something you like to have:

• Remove old ventilation unit over the stove
• Remove old cabinet above old ventilation unit over the stove
• Do some electrical magic to make sure the microwave plugged in just right and didn’t cause electrical fires
• Fabricate a spacer/mount for the microwave so as to make sure that it stayed securely in place.  This was not in the directions, but I am overly concerned about things staying on my wall.
• Mount the microwave with help of the wife
• Partially unmount the microwave with help of the wife and fix the direction of the ventilation fan as per the step skipped in the directions I apparently didn’t read carefully enough
• Re-mount the microwave
• Re-mount the cabinet above the microwave and spacer/mount.  This changes our cabinet configuration, but in a good way.

For those of you keeping track I got to do electrical work, wood work, cabinetry (a slight exageration), and install a money saving device.  The only major casualty was my thumb when a random hammer flew out of nowhere and struck it.  I feel like the lovechild of Tim “The Toolman” Taylor and Suze Orman**.

** not really, that’s disgusting.  I’m really glad I have the parents I have.

Sunday afternoon after a drive through the Eastern Rocky Mountain range by Denver and visiting the Red Rocks Amphitheater I came home and discovered my swamp cooler was making a lot of racket.  Squeaking and sounding like nastiness.  My neighbor approached my house as I exited my vehicle to say, “Did you hear me knocking?  I wanted to tell you about your swamp cooler making a lot of noise”

“Nope, I was up in the Rockies.”

“Let me know if I can help!”

I’m glad to have a friendly, helpful neighbor, but the idea of fixing the swamp cooler was not on my top ten list.  I crawled up on the roof after shutting the cooler off and took several panels off and hollared down to have it turned on.

Squeak, wobble, rotate.  Squeak, wobble, rotate.  I hollared to have it turned off again.  The pulley was spinning along with the motor, but it was not sitting correctly on the motor’s shaft.  I tightened the pulley on the shaft, turned the swamp cooler back on.  Squeak, wobble, rotate.  Apparently the pulley was funky and beyond de-funking.

I drove down to Lowe’s and picked up a new pulley.  I came home, installed the pulley on the motor shaft, re-attached the drive belt, and hollared down to have the cooler turned back on.

Hummmmmm.

The cooler turned on more quietly than it had before while we’ve lived in this house.  Apparently I could have had a quieter cooler for just under $8.00 had I noted the pulley was getting wonky.  I need to get new pads to hold the water for the cooler, but those can wait until next season.  I was glad I didn’t have to pay $85.00 to have a technician come out and service this with the pulley costing $15.00 with $40.00 in labor (or some other made up number).  All was well, quieter, and I think we’ll be good for at least another couple years in the pulley department.

If you find yourself at the grocery store and you find yourself buying coffee and you find yourself buying coffee out of those bins (which I should take pictures of so that you know EXACTLY what I mean) with the little pull levers that release the whole beans into the paper bags: STOP!  That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t buy that coffee as much as it is to say this: beware the funky flavored crud.

I had company in town and I didn’t purchase them the high end [high quality but not high priced] stuff I usually buy because they don’t like it (I offer and they generally refuse it).  But I did buy them what was supposed to be 10% Kona beans because I’m nice like that.  Except that the lemurs that put the coffee in the bins put the kona (read: hawaiian beans are in here) next to the hazelnut flavored coffee.  Note the word flavored.  That word should be a big warning sign.  They should label it, “Death star coffee flavored like hazelnuts so that the death will be sweet.”  But they don’t.

If you buy coffee that is supposed to be just plain coffee flavored out of the chute next to the flavored death star stuff then spill a little of the beans into the bag and then smell the beans.  Your nose should be able to tell if miracles have happened and your kona coffee smells like coffee or if the evil siths of hazelnut have taken over and your imported beans are really just polluted with bad ju-ju.

Save your money on the coffee that’s been polluted, report to a store manager that the devil responsible for putting the coffee in that chute should be chastised heavily, and then buy something else that may not be what you wanted, but will not be polluted.  Unless of course you’re into flavored coffee, in which case by all means just dump the arabica beans into the bag and proceed with your business.  I’m embarrassed to have written this post because I prefer home roasted coffee if possible.  But I’m a coffee snob and I have to deal with that burden every day.