Night of Excitement, Part 1

Last night was all kinds of “fun”. After Brandon left for school, I set off to get some house work done. We are actually hosting a Japanese National for dinner tonight. We have become good friends with her (she works at the travel office here on base) and she wants to make Christmas cards with me. The Japanese are such clean, neat and organized people. I know my house isn’t a mess but I wanted things to look just right when she came. So….Laundry came first. I had just thrown a load of towels in the dryer and was getting some of Brandon’s clothes put up when I smelt smoke. I came into the kitchen (the washer and dryer are in the kitchen) and smoke was coming from the dryer. I quickly shut it off and called the emergency repairs office. The man (Japanese…so it was hard to understand) told me to unplug the dryer and there would be no immediate safety issue until the repair men could be called in the morning. Fine. I can pull the dryer out and unplug it with my broken wrist. I should have just waited but smart me thinks I can do anything so I did. After I got it pulled out enough for me to get behind, I got down to the plug and tried to pull it out. Then a feeling of lightning went from my fingers thru my body and down to my toes. Even got a funny mark on my big toe from it. It was quite embarrassing. The ER says I will be fine but they are watching my heart to make sure the extra little thump goes away with this funny little box with wires running to sticky things on my chest and arm pit (um..not sure why on that one).

Well, this morning they sent a electrician to first check the outlet and the breaker thingy and all was fine there. They then sent out a appliance repair team. I tried to explain what had happened and they set off disassembling the dryer in the middle of my kitchen. It was kind of neat to see what was inside the dryer. They kept commenting on how “clean” it was. I am paranoid about the lent getting everywhere since the dryer is in the same place I cook food so I am constantly taking the vacuum to it (both front and back). While I was getting the phone so Brandon could talk to them (they told me nothing was wrong with it) they plugged it back in and turned it on. Smoke started coming out the back and when they went to unplug it, it shocked the repairman something good. I couldn’t help but give a little chuckle, thinking, ‘So…nothing is wrong with it, huh?’. They quickly removed it from the house and said they would be back.

Now I am looking at a nice new dryer. A little more fancy than the last. This one has a auto dry feature where you turn it on and it adjust the heat and air settings according to the amount of moisture in the dryer (urh,..if they say so). All I really care about is there is no smoke coming out the back when I dry the towels.