White Christmas morning

Frosty morning, December 25, 2011

Awwww

This picture is from the Golden Retriever Rescue of Southern Maryland’s blog. Go to their main site: here and make a donation for providing such a cute photo. Or you could contribute to your local dog rescue organization. I couldn’t resist.

Good work

 Tyson, the Sears’ Blue Crew man, arrived in the early morning tule fog to fix my range. I was really glad to see him. I told him I wanted to take a photo and he said, “Just a minute.” He ducked back into his truck. When he appeared again I asked him if he had stopped to comb his hair. He laughed.

He installed the new number pad connection for the stove and it is working again.

Today I baked cookies (California Gold Bricks) and made a chicken casserole for dinner. Ahhhhh.

Here is a close up of Tyson so you can see his hair style.

Mike from AT&T was here last evening and he was nice and efficient checking my new U-verse internet connection. I forgot to take a photo of him.

I really like tech guys. Now my life can get back to normal.

Packages arriving

Brown cardboard boxes are sitting by my little Christmas tree. However, these boxes are not presents. They will be opened before the 25th of December. Actually, technicians are going to rip open the cartons. The long box is the new number pad for my Jenn-Air range and the Sears’ guy will use it to fix my oven tomorrow. The flat box is a modem and other stuff for a new internet connection.

If this is blog post goes up on December 15th, that will mean the AT&T technician was here and hooked up my computer to U-verse. I’ve been without an internet connection for several days. I used my computer early Tuesday morning to get my e-mail, check for pattern orders, check my bank statement, and visit a few of my favorite blogs. When I went to get online again after 8:00 am, the connection was gone. I called AT&T and went through the endless circle about checking the connections, re-booting my modem, and re-booting my computer. I did this three times. Nothing happened.
I was finally directed to a technical person and he had me do it for the 4th time. He said, “It appears that your DSL is not working.”

“Duh,” I said. “Please reconnect it.”

“I am sorry, ma’am I cannot do that,” he said.

“Why was it disconnected?” I asked (I knew my bill was paid up to date).

He had no idea.

I signed up for U-verse internet-only service because it is less expensive than my current DSL rate. The company assured me it would be a smooth transition. They would continue the DSL until Thursday, December 15 and then switch it to U-verse at 8:00 pm. The new modem and all the various gizmos were to be installed at that time.

It felt like deja vu all over again.

In November and December of 2010 I went though a similar irritating scenario. See these links: here and here.

I do hope I will be going online and baking a new loaf of bread tomorrow.

Down to my last crust of bread

 After the Sears’ repairman left the house this morning, I made breakfast using my last crust of bread. I won’t be able to bake a loaf of bread or anything else for 10 days. The number key pad for setting the oven temperature has gone kablooey.

The number pad started acting up a while ago – right around the time we changed from daylight savings time to regular time. When I went to set the clock back, some of the numbers didn’t come up on the screen. The number 1 still worked, so I waited until it was exactly 11:11 am and then set the clock. It’s been going fine. Then, I noticed I couldn’t set certain oven temperatures. I read the manual and found that I could use “auto-set” by pressing “bake” and going up by 25-degree increments. That worked for a while. But this week the oven began turning off in the midst of baking for no reason at all. The last loaf of bread I baked the oven turned off 12 times. I sat right beside the range and every time it went off I reset the temperature. When I took the bread out of the oven, a warning beep started. An error code keep scrolling across the screen, followed by an 800 number. This went on for over an hour. I keep hitting “cancel” to no avail.

I had a Sears’ warranty so I called for a “Blue Crew” person. His name was Tyson and he came at 8:00 this morning. His diagnosis was that the number key pad was not functioning so he ordered a replacement. The pad costs $381.26 and it will be here on December 16. In the meantime, I need lots of good stovetop recipes.