The family curse

Pretty much anytime we purchase something, particularly if it is electronic in nature although it sometimes extends to items with batteries or motors, it will break or fail long before its time. We bought Erin a camera and six months later it sprung a fatal error and had to be sent back. Uncountable tools, cameras, phones, you name it have entered our house only to be shipped back rather quickly because they failed. From this we have learned to always fill out warranty and registration cards because we use the heck out of them eventually.

Thursday evening, Erin, Mike and the girls were here for dinner. We were having a last gasp of summer picnic on the deck complete with hot dogs, Italian sausage (Johnnie's was a Tofurky sausage) and a bean burger for me. I warmed the buns in the microwave over the stove as usual, along with heating corn and baked beans before. As I took the buns from the microwave, I slammed the door closed. It continued running. Hmmmmm. Stood there punching buttons to make sure the exhaust fan wasn't on, slammed the door closed again. Light was on inside the oven and the oven was cooking. So I took the buns to the deck and left the microwave oven door open.

After dinner, Johnnie took a look at it and confirmed that it was indeed still running although he thought it just thought it was running but he didn't believe the magnetron was actually emitting microwaves. Just to be safe, he unplugged the microwave. All was good.

On Friday (yesterday), Johnnie and I went to Sears and finally found a new microwave that we ordered. It won't be here until October 6th but probably more like October 7th. No problem, we can do without microwaving since we have a great stove.

Yesterday, I was opening a pile of mail and came to an envelope from Sears. It turned out to be a recall notice on our smooth cooktop stove, alerting us that a burner might just spontaneously heat itself up or heat to a temperature beyond what was set, posing a fire hazard. Do not use the stove and unplug it until the defective part could be replaced. Great. Now we have a defective stove and no microwave for the next 10 days.

Since all our appliances are from Sears, we felt they might be able to give us a hand. Johnnie got on the phone last night and waited about 30 minutes to speak to a supervisor to get some assistance with the problem. Of course it's not their fault the microwave crapped out and that the new one will take 10 days to get here. After quite a long discussion last night and again this morning with the escalation team at the Sears call center, they gave us $100 off the new microwave.

So we quickly went hunting this morning and purchased an inexpensive microwave at Target that will be our primary cooking source for the next 10 days, along with the gas grill outside (and it's trusty side burner), slow cooker and rice cooker. Kinda like camping indoors for the next 10 days and a couple weeks after that since the new stove part isn't scheduled to arrive until October 20th. Looks like my creative cooking skills will get put to the test for the next month, huh?

The family curse lives on!