sad news

Let me first start this post off by saying that if you read this and you are a friend of mine, you should know that I would not post truly bad news on a blog as a means of communicating this to you. People! Give me some credit! I also would not use this forum as a way to let you know that I am pregnant (which I am not) or getting a divorce (ditto) (I can't use getting engaged as an example since that is no longer viable for me.) or doing anything that involves something important to me or my loved ones.

Because I already startled two different people with my sad news, I feel like I need to include that disclaimer. Moving on...

My friend the sewing machine took a nose-dive on Sunday night. I am disconsolate. I almost didn't go into work on Monday (okay, don't need much of an excuse for that one). I was working on...ahem, a mother's day gift when the needle bent and then the shuttle stopped turning completely. I was aghast.

I pulled out the mini screw-drivers and unscrewed one screw at a time, removing a plate here, a part there, squinting into the nether-regions of my machine under the sharp glare of the flashlight. I fiddled, turned and poked around, but to no avail. I considered removing more screws and plates and parts, but thought better of it. Where I had stopped, I could confidently retrace my steps and put everything back together again. If I dove further in, I was certain I would put everything back together and still have a plate or screw left that I couldn't figure out what to do with.

I took the machine into a local vacuum & sewing machine repair place but balked at the cost to repair it. Or rather, the cost to maybe-repair-it-or-maybe-not-repair-it-as-it-may-not-be-
reparable-we-won't-know-until-we've-taken-it-apart-and-need-
to-charge-you-for-the-time-effort.
Ugh. Just didn't make sense, especially since I got it for darned cheap. Not that I have anything against paying these fine repair-persons for their time and effort. But if you did the math with my numbers, you'd find yourself in the same predicament as I.

Obviously this ruins all my plans for many weekends to come. Never mind what it's done to my mother's day gift project which will probably never get completed.

So I am going to give it to a co-worker who is really handy and mechanically minded and hope that his knowledge and expertise on high-rise cooling units can shed some light on the issue with my beloved Kenmore. Wish us luck.