Chocolate and stuff.
Jan. 26th, 2006 04:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarea
I have a love/hate relationship with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
romanticalgirl. You see, she's the one who got me into Veronica Mars and House. Which, I love those shows now, but it's just more TV I have to watch and more DVDs I have to buy. She also got me hooked on Lego Star Wars (Xbox game), with promises of seeing a pregnant!Lego!Queen Amidala. Recently, she's been writing masses of King Arthur fic, and waxed poetical about it during a dinner, which prompted me to buy it (used cheap online, but hasn't arrived yet). Then she gave up candy, but naturally had to introduce me to my first bag of Kissables (I think she's an agent of Hershey's), which I spent the last week or so unsuccessfully trying to find in stores (finally scored some yesterday). I love the taste of the chocolate in Hershey's kisses (yes, it's different from other chocolate!), so these mini M&M-like ones are just the yum. Yes, like I really needed to get addicted to a new kind of candy.
However, she also recently wrote Corridor, a hot little D/G ficlet, so right now I love her. She doesn't often write D/G, so this was a treat indeed.
But to further showcase my slacker status, and to prove that she's still got some D/G cards up her sleeve,lissannej wrote Observations of a Malfoy, which you should also check out immediately, if you haven't already.
Woe, where is my muse?? Woe.
+++
In other chocolate news, I finally found the chocolate-covered whole hazelnuts that Cadbury's makes, which is not sold regularly in the U.S. (do not ask me why, I do not understand why such a travesty persists) and bought a few boxes, even though it was kind of expensive. I mean, the boxes aren't very big (you only get like 30 nuts per), and then there's shipping on top of the already-pricey chocolates. :-S That place is, as far as I've been able to Google, the only place where you can actually buy them in the U.S. Anyway, after eating them again, I have to say that it was totally worth it. They're soooooooo good.
+++
Random question for those of you who are more knowledgeable about tax/investing-type things than I am (which is possibly everyone, most pets excluded): How much am I allowed to put in my Roth IRA yearly? I think the number depends on other factors, but I do not know what those factors are, so do not know how much I'm allowed to put into the Roth. Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this very dark topic.
+++
A few days ago, Talis had an 'accident' and trailed some of the 'accident' over his bed pillow and other things that needed to be then washed. I threw everything into the washer, and then took him for a walk. When I returned, the washer was about 5 miles (okay, slight exaggeration) from its original location, most probably due to an unbalanced load. I moved it back as well as I could, but then noticed that it was behaving funny. During agitation, it made this clicking sound, and didn't really seem to be agitating at all.
I called around for some quotes, but Sears had the most reasonable rate -- $45 to come look at it (other places were like $60), and then they'd tell you what was wrong and how much it would be to fix it. If you didn't want them to fix it, you just paid the $45 (which is how it works everywhere, apparently). They said that for an extra $38 they'd also check out the dryer, and if anything went wrong with it after they checked it out, I'd get part of it back. Since they're both fairly old machines (10 years), I figured why not, especially because I was having minor issues with the dryer, anyway.
The Sears technician came over this morning (I shut Talis in my bedroom, and he barked the whole time), and within 30 seconds (literally) had identified the problem with the washer and fixed it. Apparently if the machine moves around a lot (such as with an unbalanced load), certain wires can get disconnected, which is what happened. He lifted up the machine, connected the wire at the bottom, and viola! It was fixed. Instead of charging me $90, he went ahead and just charged me the $45 for inspecting the machine, and noted that I had 'refused' his estimate (i.e., that he hadn't fixed it).
Next, the dryer. I said that there wasn't anything really wrong with it, but that I hadn't lived there very long and it just didn't seem to dry as well as my old one did. Could just be the difference in machines, who knows. He checked all the usual problem areas, but said the machine was clean, the vents were clear, so it wasn't that. Then he did a temperature test, and identified the problem: He told me I wasn't crazy, that on the highest setting the temp. ought to reach 160 degrees, but it was only at about 84. O.o He said it was the thermometer going out on me. I had three options: 1) He could fix it. Replacing the thermometer would cost $175. Which seems insanely steep to me, but it wasn't like I could bargain with him about it. 2) I could buy a new dryer, which he said cost about $300. 3) I could buy my own thermometer, and have some appliance-savvy friend install it for me; it wasn't that hard. 4) I could buy a warranty on it, which would cost $71, and live with the low temp drying for about a month, then call in the problem, and the warranty would cover the replacement of the thermometer. Option #1 was out. That is just ridiculously expensive. I'd rather buy a new dryer than pay that much to fix one that's 10 years old. Option #3 would work, if I knew any such person or had any confidence in my own ability to do it myself. So I went with option #4. It seemed the smartest, most cost efficient thing to do, even if I have to live with poor drying for another few weeks. And I'm not sure, but I think technicians like him make the most money from selling warranties, and since he had been cool about the washer, I figured it was a win-win situation. Or if that's not true, then he was just cool for even offering that option.
So hopefully, this will not come to bite me in the ass later. :p Hopefully in a month Sears will come out to fix my dryer, it'll be covered under the warranty, and that will be that.
romanticalgirl. You see, she's the one who got me into Veronica Mars and House. Which, I love those shows now, but it's just more TV I have to watch and more DVDs I have to buy. She also got me hooked on Lego Star Wars (Xbox game), with promises of seeing a pregnant!Lego!Queen Amidala. Recently, she's been writing masses of King Arthur fic, and waxed poetical about it during a dinner, which prompted me to buy it (used cheap online, but hasn't arrived yet). Then she gave up candy, but naturally had to introduce me to my first bag of Kissables (I think she's an agent of Hershey's), which I spent the last week or so unsuccessfully trying to find in stores (finally scored some yesterday). I love the taste of the chocolate in Hershey's kisses (yes, it's different from other chocolate!), so these mini M&M-like ones are just the yum. Yes, like I really needed to get addicted to a new kind of candy.However, she also recently wrote Corridor, a hot little D/G ficlet, so right now I love her. She doesn't often write D/G, so this was a treat indeed.
But to further showcase my slacker status, and to prove that she's still got some D/G cards up her sleeve,
lissannej wrote Observations of a Malfoy, which you should also check out immediately, if you haven't already.Woe, where is my muse?? Woe.
+++
In other chocolate news, I finally found the chocolate-covered whole hazelnuts that Cadbury's makes, which is not sold regularly in the U.S. (do not ask me why, I do not understand why such a travesty persists) and bought a few boxes, even though it was kind of expensive. I mean, the boxes aren't very big (you only get like 30 nuts per), and then there's shipping on top of the already-pricey chocolates. :-S That place is, as far as I've been able to Google, the only place where you can actually buy them in the U.S. Anyway, after eating them again, I have to say that it was totally worth it. They're soooooooo good.
+++
Random question for those of you who are more knowledgeable about tax/investing-type things than I am (which is possibly everyone, most pets excluded): How much am I allowed to put in my Roth IRA yearly? I think the number depends on other factors, but I do not know what those factors are, so do not know how much I'm allowed to put into the Roth. Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this very dark topic.
+++
A few days ago, Talis had an 'accident' and trailed some of the 'accident' over his bed pillow and other things that needed to be then washed. I threw everything into the washer, and then took him for a walk. When I returned, the washer was about 5 miles (okay, slight exaggeration) from its original location, most probably due to an unbalanced load. I moved it back as well as I could, but then noticed that it was behaving funny. During agitation, it made this clicking sound, and didn't really seem to be agitating at all.
I called around for some quotes, but Sears had the most reasonable rate -- $45 to come look at it (other places were like $60), and then they'd tell you what was wrong and how much it would be to fix it. If you didn't want them to fix it, you just paid the $45 (which is how it works everywhere, apparently). They said that for an extra $38 they'd also check out the dryer, and if anything went wrong with it after they checked it out, I'd get part of it back. Since they're both fairly old machines (10 years), I figured why not, especially because I was having minor issues with the dryer, anyway.
The Sears technician came over this morning (I shut Talis in my bedroom, and he barked the whole time), and within 30 seconds (literally) had identified the problem with the washer and fixed it. Apparently if the machine moves around a lot (such as with an unbalanced load), certain wires can get disconnected, which is what happened. He lifted up the machine, connected the wire at the bottom, and viola! It was fixed. Instead of charging me $90, he went ahead and just charged me the $45 for inspecting the machine, and noted that I had 'refused' his estimate (i.e., that he hadn't fixed it).
Next, the dryer. I said that there wasn't anything really wrong with it, but that I hadn't lived there very long and it just didn't seem to dry as well as my old one did. Could just be the difference in machines, who knows. He checked all the usual problem areas, but said the machine was clean, the vents were clear, so it wasn't that. Then he did a temperature test, and identified the problem: He told me I wasn't crazy, that on the highest setting the temp. ought to reach 160 degrees, but it was only at about 84. O.o He said it was the thermometer going out on me. I had three options: 1) He could fix it. Replacing the thermometer would cost $175. Which seems insanely steep to me, but it wasn't like I could bargain with him about it. 2) I could buy a new dryer, which he said cost about $300. 3) I could buy my own thermometer, and have some appliance-savvy friend install it for me; it wasn't that hard. 4) I could buy a warranty on it, which would cost $71, and live with the low temp drying for about a month, then call in the problem, and the warranty would cover the replacement of the thermometer. Option #1 was out. That is just ridiculously expensive. I'd rather buy a new dryer than pay that much to fix one that's 10 years old. Option #3 would work, if I knew any such person or had any confidence in my own ability to do it myself. So I went with option #4. It seemed the smartest, most cost efficient thing to do, even if I have to live with poor drying for another few weeks. And I'm not sure, but I think technicians like him make the most money from selling warranties, and since he had been cool about the washer, I figured it was a win-win situation. Or if that's not true, then he was just cool for even offering that option.
So hopefully, this will not come to bite me in the ass later. :p Hopefully in a month Sears will come out to fix my dryer, it'll be covered under the warranty, and that will be that.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 01:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 01:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 02:44 am (UTC)Hopefully it'll rez soon and after it regens its full health and mana, you'll be a writing fiend.
Kissables and chocolate covered hazelnuts, and I have none. Why God.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 07:56 pm (UTC)Clearly it's because you are a sinner who has hailed Satan.
no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 10:11 am (UTC)Btw, we sell blocks of Cadbury chocolate with hazelbut here. Not quite the same as whole hazelnuts but it's just as nice, I think. Want me to send you a few blocks? I totally will, plus a packet of coconut slices to round out the deal :D Just say the word ♥
no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 10:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-27 08:00 pm (UTC)Unfortunately, the blocks of chocolate with hazelnut in them is not the same at all. :( (I'm not a fan of candy bars in general.) I wish they were, because those I can find lots of places on the net, and in fact they might sell them at Cost Plus here. So I definitely want you to save your money, though you are the sweetest for offering. It's the individual whole hazelnuts that I was looking for; they're delicious and I really like being able to better control how much of it I eat. I couldn't believe how hard they were to find; that's why I was so excited that I finally got them!