Freebies and Fixing

So what has been going on this week? It's been busy at work which is a always a welcome change. My team lead and I have been imparting as much knowledge as possible on our new intern and although I'm sure it's overwhelming I get the feeling he's really getting a lot out of it. My day was completely made yesterday when my coworker, whose twins have outgrown much of their baby gear, gave me this Peg Perego car seat for free. (Please ignore errant maps laying in the background, that's par for the course in my office.)

I printed the instruction manual for it off the internet and it's awaiting me to come into the city with my car to pick it up. She refused to take anything for it so I will have to find something little to give her as a thank you. Can I also mention that I love the fact that it is orange?

Our dishwasher developed a leak underneath recently. We, unfortunately didn't discover it in time to save us some minor damage to our floor but we're lucky it was a slow leak so only a small portion of the floor was affected. The unit was dripping at varying levels of volume from the water intake valve which is located pretty much where you see the plastic container under the unit here:

It is really sad that this happened because this dishwasher came new with our condo. It is like 3 1/2 years old. I began researching the problem and realized it was the water intake valve. I was convinced we could fix it ourselves or at least give it a try and save some cash. I was right. Jake watched a couple of online tutorial videos and then ordered the part from Amazon (the white part in the corner of the paper towel below).

It only took Jake about 90 minutes to make the repair. It would have gone a lot faster but he had a really tough time removing the worn out joint from the water pipe. The only real tricky part about the whole process is that there are electrical connections that also need to be correctly made to the intake valve. Jake got it all hooked up, turned the water and power back on to the unit and ran a cycle. The unit ran fine and after it finished and as of this morning the leaking seems to have stopped. Thank goodness for the internets because we probably saved hundreds by not having to have someone come out to fix this. This, of course, just fuels my pet peeve about how poor the quality is of so many appliances these days. (In the photo above you'll see one of the sets of pliers has my old initials written on it. When I first moved out of my parents' house my dad equipped me with a basic set of tools and was kind enough to write my initials on all of them since I was moving into a group house. I plan on reminding him of this, thankfully, on Sunday.)

Okay, sorry that was kind of a lengthy discussion on the logistics of dishwasher repair. I'm looking forward to a nice weekend. I think tonight we might try the new Nando's Peri Peri that opened in our neighborhood. I believe Nando's is a South African company but it is becoming more popular in the U.S. There is a pretty hilarious Nando's ad entitled "Last Dictator Standing" that you should watch. It was banned in a bunch of countries overseas and I can kind of see why. Oh and this just reminded me that I have been slacking on my mission of trying the Coke Freestyle machine at Noodles & Co.! I just haven't been in the mood for soda or pasta lately. Sigh, I have failed the blogiverse. Just kidding. Have a great weekend everyone!