Yesterday the dishwasher tech finally arrived to figure out why the machine stopped running mid-cycle last Wednesday night. It was a blown fuse.

Also yesterday we discovered that the insulation covering the electrical cord on our Hoover Wind Tunnel vacuum cleaner was giving way and exposing some of the wires.

A while back we did something we rarely do; we bought maintenance contracts on the fridge, the washer/dryer and the dishwasher. We did that despite a feeling that nine out of ten times those deals are nothing but money-makers for the manufacturers. The fridge (or actually the ice machine portion of it) had failed three times in six weeks, and there was no reason to believe the repairs were going to take after its last repair.

We’ve been glad we did. The ice machine has indeed failed once or twice since then. In addition, you get a free annual checkup for each appliance as part of the contract, so that’s been a reassurance.

We recently dropped the washer/dryer, but we still have a year to go on the other two appliances. Ironically, the dishwasher failed three weeks after its checkup.

The vacuum cleaner has had things go wrong that we’ve been able to ignore or repair with duct tape, but a fraying electrical cord is not something we want to fool with, so I took it in to a local shop. That place is a pit. The pathway to the counter is eight inches wide, navigable only by squeezing past the dying corpses of old machines. The floor has washers strewn all over it. The only available space for checkwriting on the counter is about as big as a checkbook. Nonetheless, the guy has a good reputation.

He called this afternoon and said it was ready, so I went down and got it. It looks nearly new. We’ll see how well it works.