Loss, Love & Lint

This weekend we had experiences with Loss, Love and Lint. First, a friend of ours from church lost his father on Wednesday last week. He and his wife went with us on our first cruise and is a really nice guy. It was a blood clotting issue and was quite sudden. Today was the funeral so Lucie and I went to that.

On Saturday, our Pastor's daughter got married. That was a good time. Again we sat with some cruise friends at the reception. It was about an hour and fifteen minutes away but it was a nice drive through Amish country and the weather was nice. The meal was nice and all went well. I was assigned to watch the gift table but it was right near us. I and a couple of guys loaded the loot onto a cart and wheeled it to the brother of the bride's room. They are moving to Portsmouth, NH - the groom is an officer on a submarine being overhauled at the shipyard there. And in the "it's a small world category," my younger brother is working on that sub and the bride and groom are actually living in the same apartment building that I did when I was in 4th grade!

And on Friday the timer in our dryer gave out. I hoped. The dryer just wouldn't start. For some time the wrinkle preventer part of the timer didn't work - it used to tumble the clothes every 5 minutes for about a minute after the clothes were dry to keep them from getting wrinkly. So I was hoping that the entire timing mechanism finally died and it wasn't something more serious. I bought a new timer online and it came in today. There was about 12 wires to disconnect from the old timer and connect to the new one but they lined up (mostly!) and it hooked right up. Turned the dial and pressed the button and PRESTO! We have an operational dryer! I am running it through a cycle now to be sure but that $68 piece is a heck of a lot cheaper than a $500 dryer!