Well..i am gonna turn in for the night and maybe do some reading or crocheting or annoying the cats (they like it :) ) So I bid you, Ralf and Cooper a wonderful and blessed night.

Apple Crumble!! Delicious! What is better is that it is not hard to make really and you can control how much of anything you put in it. There are, apparently, trade schools but you never hear of them because college is touted as being the cure-all for everything but the cruncher is that if you asked some of these college grads to do the laundry or change a light bulb they will freeze like a deer in the headlights and not know what to do. Guess I should read up a bit on basic wiring so I can do what my dad did such as putting a new cord on a lamp or small appliance or replacing a wall outlet or even rewiring a lamp itself........ Microswitches, such as the ones in coffee makers are -of course- small but also are more prone to wearing out especially if they are in things that get used a lot so I suppose it would help to know how to bypass the switch itself if needed or something...

It is easy to do that..to over do things isn't it? You do one thing then discover that something else needs to be done and figure it'll only take a few minutes then suddenly before you know it you've cleaned the entire house, re-roofed it then planted some trees as an after-thought :) Anyway my dad was really great with stuff, he even built a deck all o n his own and it was SO sturdy that a herd of elephants could tap dance on it! If I was to do any sort of minor repair I would need a basic tool kit and perhaps a soldering iron wouldn't hurt either, I do have a few tools laying around so I suppose I could try to make my own tool kit; what I need is a small wrench kit along with those allen wrenches, wire stripper and a ratcheting wrench kit...then I need to learn how to fix simple stuff like repairing or replacing the flapper or fill valve or perhaps even repairing my toaster oven if the need arises. My dad could fix almost anything but then again he grew up in an environment where he learned stuff like that not just at home but in trade school.

If I knew more about basic repairs i would repair my toaster oven whenever that time comes. Back in about 2004 or so my dad and I had this toaster oven and it was nice but the power cord was barely adequate for the appliance; actually it was dangerous because when we'd use the appliance the cord got hot so my dad took apart the toaster oven and replaced the power cord with something far better which was basically one of those utility cords and since he worked with wiring for decades as well as in the electric shop of the place he used to work at he learned much about these thing and we never had to worry about the cord overheating. Another time we had a coffee maker and the micro switch for turning it o n and off wore out because it was designed to break down so my dad took apart the coffee maker and wired the switch to always be 'On' so when we wanted to make coffee we just plugged the maker in and when we were done with coffee we unplugged it. Heck one time when I was in high school my dad even installed a headphone jack onto our tv so at anytime one of us could watch something at any time without waking anyone else. He was really amazing with repairs of all sorts....

Thank you..it does make me feel better knowing someone cares about me enough to check in. It does get kinda lonely in that respect.... Speaking of laundry I did a couple of loads yesterday (or was that Saturday?) so it felt nice to get that out of the way. It is funny, the toaster oven I have is one my dad ordered online years ago and was a refurbished one because it was cheaper and it still works fairly well, sometimes the timer doesn't go off as it should which in turn turns off the oven so I learned to also keep track of teh time with another timer but I have baked my biscuits in it as well as other things and if that goes I will miss it as appliances are pretty pricey.