Twice as Nice 2/25/22

Last Tuesday’s date was just too good an opportunity to pass up. Truth be told, I did pass it up only to be reminded by John on Monday, “Do you realize tomorrow is 2/22/22? We won’t have another date like that until 11 years from now when it’s 3/3/33?) I added that even that is not as cool as 2/22/22, with it’s one number repeated 5 times. But I have one even better. My niece Emery (actually my niece Tahlia’s daughter so I guess that makes her my grand-niece or 3rd cousin once-removed or whatever, but her mom calls me Uncle Andy, so let’s leave it at that). Anyway her date of birth was 11/11/11 and this year she’ll turn 11. Got that all straightened out? Good. That makes one of us. So we made up a comic about 2/22/22. Frankly, it would be better if this were the 22nd month, but who’s counting? We did the comic. And Al this time represents John’s thinking, while Al’s duly-unimpressed wife, Joanne represents mine. Gee, that’s great, now let me get back to whatever it is I was doing before you interrupted me with this totally unimportant detail. Until you can match Emery’s birthday, with one number repeated 6 times, I ain’t impressed.

Onto the second comic of the week which actually comes up first if you click your newsletter. It concerns a broken dishwasher and the frustration of “finding a guy.” Once we get over the inherent sexism in that phrase, we can concentrate on the fact that it’s true. Trying to find a repairman or woman in today’s day and age is almost impossible. They can see you in a couple weeks, or a couple months, and then when the day draws close, they call and tell you they can’t make it after all because their current job is running late. This phenomenon has happened to yours truly in our laundry room, my bedroom closet (the door had come loose and jammed, making it impossible to access half my closet, but it’s covid and I wear nothing but sweats so it didn’t really matter), the television (streaming over a computer sucks) and, last but not least, the dishwasher. Yes, this really happened. Here’s the scene: my wife goes to Baltimore to visit her cousin for the weekend and after dropping Joanie off at the train station I come home to empty the dishwasher but, to my horror, the dishes are just sitting there in a pool of water at the bottom of the aforementioned machine. So I did what I used to do for years before finally living in a place with an actual dishwasher. I became the dishwasher. And at first it was relaxing. Then not so much. I grew to resent being the dishwasher which then metastasized into hating to be the dishwasher. I called the plumber. They answered, “Oh we don’t service dishwashers but here’s the name of a guy who does”. I called the name of the guy who does. Turns out he doesn’t. He said to call Bosch, the manufacturer. Bosch told me they could make it in 5 weeks and gave me an appointment date. I asked if they had the name of a local person who might be able to come by sooner. They said, “If we give you the name of someone else, we’ll have to cancel your appointment for next month”. I asked if they actually had the name of someone else and when they demurred, I hung up. Finally I called an appliance store who said they’d be happy to put in a new dishwasher but couldn’t repair an old one. HOWEVER, tada, they had the name of somebody who could. The guy came in, looked at the dishwasher (the machine, not me) and found a piece of a wine glass had broken off and was blocking the pump. He took the piece of glass out, the dishwasher drained, and voila, it was fixed. I recounted all this to John who said (as he often does), “That’s way too complicated, why don’t we just say the guy’s on vacation for two weeks in Key West?” So we did, and then John revealed that that was exactly what happened to him when he was searching for a repair person. As Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say, “It’s always something.”

That’s it for this week. We’ve got another two new ones coming next week including the exciting end to the 2-part broken dishwasher saga. Have a great weekend,

Andy and John