The Price Family Home Companion

Murphy's Law A/C Style

Murphy would be proud. Our air conditioner gave up the ghost when Chantell's mom was visiting... over the weekend (from Friday night until Tuesday noon). Luckily, the weather was cooler than it has been, but it was still HOT and quite muggy... "How hot was it?" I'm glad you asked...

It was so hot, that if it were any hotter we'd be dropping like French! da-dutch

We waited until Monday because we didn't want to pay the extra overtime expense. cha-ching

Turns out, the compressor had gone bad. Anyone hazard to guess what a 5-ton compressor goes for these days? Close to twelve hundred smackers. cha-ching That's about 8 bucks per pound! da-dutch

That's not including the $75 disposal fee cha-ching and $75 coolant replacement fee cha-ching, etc, etc. cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching.

Never fret however, because we have ourselves a handy-dandy home warranty which we secured as part of the contract when we bought the house (it was only like $350, but the sellers agreed to pay it).

Anyway, we paid $50 bucks for the service call... they fixed our A/C and we're back in business.

I'm no accountant, but by my detailed cost analysis we saved some *cha-ching* of our own... which is nice pour un changement.

Real Shocker

Is anyone shocked over Benny Afflake and J-Lo's split? We're not.

What is a real shocker was the lightning strike (or power surge from a strike) a couple nights ago that knocked out many electronics around the house.

The first discovery was our garage door opener. It wasn't responding to the remote controls (although it worked just fine from the button by the door). I reset our unplugged it, reset the codes, and plugged it back in. The code reseting was probably not necessary, but I had already done it so I'll never know.

Apparently, several other people had problems with their openers too as we saw quite a few people working on them last night during our walk.

Also, the clock on the stereo in the family room is "stuck" on 8:46pm (in case anyone from the future needs a jiga-watt to power the flux capacitor in their time machine, they'll know when to expect a bolt of lightening).

The latest discovery was our phones. We've been able to "reboot" the cordless phones, but there's still something odd about the answering machine. It was the least of my worries, so I suppose we're pretty fortunate.

In any case, most things are back online so-to-speak, but it sure was odd the number of things that got hurt by the whole ordeal.

Costly Discovery

Hypothetically speaking, what do you suppose would happen to a dime if it were put in a paper shredder? Guess no more, Salem put an end to that enigma...

Witness the shrapnel and a few other new pictures in the September album.

Digital Restoration

Chantell collected a bagful of photos of her grandparents when she was in Albuquerque a few months ago. The intent is to compile them into an album or some such thing for their 50th Wedding Anniversary.

Her "Papo", Dailey, was in the Air Force. While he was quite a handsome man at the time, a particular photo was not in very good shape. So, I decided to try my hand at restoring it (digitally).

I am in no way a professional (see my brother, Brody, for that). However, I must say that I am very proud of how it turned out.

Check out the new tab entitled Genealogy to take a look at the results and let me know what you think.

Salem Sickeola

Salem has not been feeling well. She ran a mild fever for a couple of days and, now, appears to have Roseola. I've never heard of that before, but it sounds pretty common (especially among infants her age).

She's been rather demanding (read crabby) these few days, which is understandable, but it's still taking its toll on us. Anyway, it should clear up on its own after a couple more days.