The Fan. The fan had been sitting next to my spot at the dining table where my computer lived most of the summer, and over time, it got slower and slower and slower, finally, even on the highest setting, just sort of growling, but not actually turning, let alone fanning. Rachel had mentioned that there was an electronics pick up at her office coming up, and they would take anything of the sort that was broken and I said aha, I'll get rid of it that way.
But when I went to actually unplug the thing and carry it out I was seized by a fit of irritation. It *shouldn't* be broken, there was no *reason* why it should be broken. It's not as though it had any moving parts. Well, it did, actually, but not the sort of parts one expected to, you know, *break*.
So I... tore it apart and cleaned all the bits and squirted in a bit of oil and tightened everything up again and....poof! Like topsy it goes. Quieter, too, than it did before.
I don't know where this idea that I could fix things came from. I once showed up at my parents' house and my mother said, "hello my cassette player is broken, can you fix it?" just like that. Why would she expect I'd be able to repair such a thing? No matter, I took the machine apart, saw that a drive belt had broken, looked around and found a suitable rubber band and put it all back together and just as in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, there you go! Sure, I fixed it but again, why she expected me to be able to fix it and why I was*able* to fix it, I do not know. Innate mechanical aptitude? From where? I grew up in a house with a pair of pliers, a standard screwdriver, and a hammer. We were not builders, we were not tinkerers, we did not repair things.. The closest we any of us ever got to fiddling with the guts of anything was when we changed typewriter ribbons, which it seemed we needed to do frequently because the one thing we did do was write, and given our handwriting, that meant typing.
Anyway, the fan is fixed. You should hear it-- it's like a sleeping cat, snoring more gently than does my own cat, she who you can hear in the next room....
The Fan. The fan had been sitting next to my spot at the dining table where my computer lived most of the summer, and over time, it got slower and slower and slower, finally, even on the highest setting, just sort of growling, but not actually turning, let alone fanning. Rachel had mentioned that there was an electronics pick up at her office coming up, and they would take anything of the sort that was broken and I said aha, I'll get rid of it that way.
But when I went to actually unplug the thing and carry it out I was seized by a fit of irritation. It *shouldn't* be broken, there was no *reason* why it should be broken. It's not as though it had any moving parts. Well, it did, actually, but not the sort of parts one expected to, you know, *break*.
So I... tore it apart and cleaned all the bits and squirted in a bit of oil and tightened everything up again and....poof! Like topsy it goes. Quieter, too, than it did before.
I don't know where this idea that I could fix things came from. I once showed up at my parents' house and my mother said, "hello my cassette player is broken, can you fix it?" just like that. Why would she expect I'd be able to repair such a thing? No matter, I took the machine apart, saw that a drive belt had broken, looked around and found a suitable rubber band and put it all back together and just as in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, there you go! Sure, I fixed it but again, why she expected me to be able to fix it and why I was*able* to fix it, I do not know. Innate mechanical aptitude? From where? I grew up in a house with a pair of pliers, a standard screwdriver, and a hammer. We were not builders, we were not tinkerers, we did not repair things.. The closest we any of us ever got to fiddling with the guts of anything was when we changed typewriter ribbons, which it seemed we needed to do frequently because the one thing we did do was write, and given our handwriting, that meant typing.
Anyway, the fan is fixed. You should hear it-- it's like a sleeping cat, snoring more gently than does my own cat, she who you can hear in the next room....
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