Jananas

When we were up at the cottage over Labour Day weekend, we stopped in at the local yarn shop Log Cabin Yarns. Mrs. Knits had some fun hand dyed sock yarn that she’d whipped up herself. I couldn’t resist this following skein as it reminds me of Fruit Loops.

We spent a lot of time in the car last week, so I had plenty of time to knit and plenty of sock yarn on hand. I’ve tried my hand at knitting socks before, but I generally don’t like how fiddly it is. On our travels this fall, I want to try to teach myself to learn to like knitting socks as there are lots of knitting techniques to learn. The first pair I whipped up were a basic sport sock. I used slightly bigger needles then the pattern called for (3.5mm instead of 3mm) as those were what I had on hand. The nice thing was that it meant that these knit up even faster.

The fabric is a little looser, but they are awesome for hanging around the house socks. Even better is that I didn’t hate knitting them, so I may have broken my sock curse and learned to like knitting ‘em.

A woman at The Knit Cafe wrote up a pattern for a super cute little crocheted owl. The ladies made a whole bunch of them that are currently hanging in the front window. I liked them and had a bunch of ends of balls of gray yarn, so I decided to try my hand at making some. These are the first two. I’m going to work on the bodies for another two.

This was a pretty big day in the Jananas household. All three cats on the couch at the same time. This was basically a sneak attack on the humans’  part. Liam (the big fluffy guy on the left) and Romeo (on the right) were totally unaware that the other was on the couch as a human had been in the middle. Mitzy (in the middle) loves to sit right where a person was just sitting, so she hopped up and settled right in. It was a rare moment of peace and goodwill on earth that was thankfully captured forever in digital media.

Jason and I visited his family this past weekend. I noticed a magnet from Springfield City Area Transit on his parents fridge. Springfield City Area Transit had the handy acronym SCAT. And their website is scatrideline.com. You can even “Advertise with SCAT”… I’m not sure about everyone else, but this just seems like a major  fail moment to me.

We’re hoping that their buses are full of old jazz musicians, because the alternative doens’t entice me to use public transportation.

This week I received a voicemail from Maytag asking me to call a number (1-800-326-2742) because my fridge was being recalled due to a fire hazard (official recall site). So I go look in my fridge and write down the model and serial number. I call in. I answer a bunch of questions before finding out that the number is only for The Brick (who I didn’t buy from) and the recall is only for top mounted or side by side freezers (I have a bottom mounted). At this point I’m a little annoyed, but figure that I should follow up with Maytag themselves just in case.

I get the Maytag Recall hotline number (1-877-329-3304) and call in. We go through the entire rigamorole of giving personal information, model and serial number, purchase date, etc. all over again. Get to the end and the lady on the other end of the line tells me that my fridge is fine.

I suggest that they should look into the fact that customers who aren’t part of the recall are being notified. The CSR responds that they are likely trying to contact as many customers as possible, essentially so that they can cover everyone who is impacted.

I’m annoyed. I admittedly didn’t do any research into the issue before calling, although I think that its fair to assume that when you’ve been contacted by the manufacturer that you are included in the recall.  I’m still annoyed. I went to sleep last night half worried that my house might burn down. I sounded like an idiot to the two CSRs I spoke with (and yes, this is frustrating – especially when its not your fault!). I wasted a half hour of my time following up on something that wasn’t an issue at all (if I’d had to call later in the day, this would have been real minutes on my cell plan and thus cost me real money).

And all because as a company Maytag isn’t able to manage your data effectively.