Exciting condo updates

[muckefuck]

1. Fastest way to kill a chummy conversation around the new firepit: casually make reference to child sexual abuse. (Totally not my fault! Someone else brought up The interpretation of dreams. Or maybe someone else brought up the interpretation of dreams and I brought up The interpretation of dreams so it still is kinda my fault.)
2. Crazy Neighbour has been spotted on her porch but still seems not to have interacted with anyone since the Great Tree Massacre of 2009. My thirst for drama goes unslaked!
3. That buzzing we heard whenever we tried to open the microwave door? Turns out it translates to "Buy a new microwave." As long as we don't go for stainless (which neither of us gives a rat's ass about anyway), it'll cost less than a new circuit board even before figuring in time and labour. (Ignoring the the $130 it took to find this out, of course.) Oh, well; another excuse to visit the wonderland of Abt Electronics.
   
   Excursus: What is it with people calling "Abt" "ABT"? When even repairmen are doing it, you know employees at the store must be saying it, too. Does it just not look anything like a name unless you're German?
4. The neighbour's daughter had a slumber party last night. Six teenaged girls, which means there was enough noise for thirty ordinary adults. At least outside of the occasional lulls when they were all texting furiously.
5. Our oregano is blooming. Is there any culinary use for oregano blossoms? I'm assuming we should trim them before they go to seed, since the last thing we need in our plot is more damn oregano. The presence of blooms won't affect the taste of the leaves, will it?

Comments

[lhn.livejournal.com]

(Ignoring the the $130 it took to find this out, of course.)

I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that attempting to have any (non-warranty) repair beyond the most obvious and superficial on home appliances is a mug's game. The odds of paying significant labor rates for either a diagnosis of "replace it" or an attempted fix that comes undone in short order mean, in my experience, that more often than not it's money thrown down a hole.

E.g., we got a room air conditioner repaired once, with the result that $100+ got us maybe an extra year before it went again, and that time the repair visit (another $70+) came up nil. Dividing the cost of the new unit by the number of years they generally last meant that even with an apparent success, it wasn't worth the money to keep the old one going. And that doesn't take into account the fact that the new unit had some advantages (remote control, digital thermostat rather than twist-the-unmarked-dial-and-hope, and of course higher general energy-efficiency.)

[trom.livejournal.com]

you want to pluck the blossoms. Once it flowers all of the energy of the plant goes towards supporting the blossoms and it stops making lovely yummy oregano leaves.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

What is it with people calling "Abt" "ABT"? When even repairmen are doing it, you know employees at the store must be saying it, too. Does it just not look anything like a name unless you're German?

TLAs are common, and Abt looks a lot like, e.g., ABC, ADT (a security alarm company that advertises a lot), etc. Add the unfamiliar consonant combination, and it doesn't surprise me that people make the mistake.