The Contraption

Tubs o' Fun

K brought it with her from her recent trip to Eugene, a gift from her sister. Its a Haier XQBM22-C compact, portable washing machine (used). It's a plug-ugly little white box with tubes running into it and out of it. One tube you plug into your faucet (that's the Input) and the other you hang in your sink (that's the Output). You can throw about 9 pounds of laundry into the thing, and it does a fairly decent, if gentle job of soak/wash/rinse/repeat. The "Soak" portion of the drill is the most interesting--every 50 seconds or so, the thing agitates with a gentle fwump just to make sure everything gets soaked.

Excited as we were to not go to the laundromat again, (as soon as possible!) Tuesday we did a trial-run. I chose my underwear and socks as the victims because 1) I was out of socks and 2) better to experiment on my stuff if anything goes, as they say on the news-magazines, "horribly, horribly wrong."

I took the faucet filter apparatus off and threaded the Haier's adapter into the faucet (making sure not to strip it!). I fitted the hose to the adapter and plugged that into the "Water Gazinta" on the washer. So far, so good.

Then I read the manual. The web-site forum for the thing has all sorts of discouraging words about reading the instructions, but I thought I'd better, just so I'd have the later excuse "I read the instructions!!" I found I'd have to adjust my devil-may-care attitude to laundry. "Squatty box" only takes so much laundry, and like all machines you're warned to not "overload!" That's okay on an industrial machine that takes 20 to 30 pounds of laundry, but on this delicate little flower the margin for error is a lot greater. One hanky too many? Boom! Fortunately, the "User and Care Guide" has a nifty little chart telling me what my clothes weigh! It also has nifty little charts telling me what the timings are on every combination of cycle from "Heavy Soil" to "Wash Only." It has yet another chart (under the headline "Know Your Machine") telling me what level of water goes with what poundage of laundry along with the proper ounce-age of dry and liquid detergent. Damn! I'd only gone by cap-fulls before! This was like chemistry!

Even though I stood over the thing with constant vigilance checking for leaks over its hour of operation, it failed to do anything but contain water and wash clothes and spin the be-jeebers out of them, dumping the water into the sink--which never threatened to over-fill in the least. Neat little gadget, and probably a bit more energy-efficient than your typical "big box of shakes." It all ended on a surreal note, when, to tell us it had finished its appointed tasks, it chirped out a lively electronic rendition of "Jingle Bells," right up to the second chorus! I went to the manual to see if I could make it "change its tune," but no soap (it having gone through the "rinse " cycle, already)

After an evening of sitting on a collapsible rack by the roaring wood-stove (in front of the "no-electricity-needed" fan) my load of whites were warm and dry, though slightly stiff. It's that "dry heat," thing.

The bottom line is, it beats a half-hour drive to three hours of laundromat time, with a fistful of quarters. We're going to keep out little tub o' fun. In the spirit of Ian Fleming, we've dubbed it "Wishy-Washy Chug-Chug."

---------------------------------------------------------------------

There must be some sort of fish fun-run going on, because the seals are barking up a storm. Yesterday afternoon and far into the evening, there was the occassional "Arf! Arf," but a casual look through the binoculars shows no tell-tail sign of bobbing heads or clusters of rooster-tails as they go on the fishing expeditions. The rabbits seem to be hunkering down, the hoot-owl still makes his presence known, and yesterday I saw a Northern flicker exploring our porch (it has red malars on its throat--pictured)


-------------------------------------------------------------------
The weekend has not much in store, except for a meeting of The Gang of Four (minus one). Johnson's flying off to see his dad in middle America. So, Bolt, Martin, Birthday Boy FarmerScott and I are going to have make some plans--four-handed poker, or go see "The Kingdom." Whatever happens, It'll be good to see 'em.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

HALP Name Yojimbo's Movie Blog

Yes, it's been long in the works--a blog dedicated solely to movies (God knows we need another one!), but the only thing that's stopped me from getting it going has been a name.

I can't think of a good one.

Well, I can't think of one I like enough to commit to this thing. It needs to be short, clever have a film-theme and be cheerfully ironic. I'll settle for short, clever and have a film-theme.

Any ideas?

(I'm stuck on a Monty Python sketch--something like "It's the Arts!"--where the program title was "Peter Ilitch Tchaikovsky: Musical visionary or, was he just a silly old poof who wrote tunes?" Something along those lines, but I can't come up with anything Good and Short enough).

HALP!