Chrissy

So can you tell I'm not on vacation any longer? Gone are the days of 2 posts a day and we're back to the once a week blogging that seems to be customary these days. Vacation was good - not stress free by any stretch of the imagination - but still good. In many ways, it was good to be back at work.

The biggest unintended excitement of last week was the demise of one of our water heaters. Mid week last week while I was washing the dishes, I noticed that while the faucet was only half way between hot and cold and the water was so hot that I couldn't put my hand under it. Now I don't know much about things like this, but I do know that wild fluctuations in water temperature are a sign that the water heater is about to go. It seemed to calm down over the course of the week, but by the weekend, there was no hot water on that side of the house. It came back eventually, but it was intermittent throughout the weekend. Also telling was the presence of a water around the base of the heater. It was leaking and yeah, it was dying.

So we put a call in to the plumber to have them come take a look at it. It didn't take long for us to get the diagnosis - new water heater needed. Before too long , we had a new water heater to replace the old dying one and all was back to normal. I really didn't know how old the other one was - I just knew that it was OLD - so I asked the plumber to look up and see how old it was. Turns out it was installed in 1972! That's right, the year I was born, making it 38 years old. The fact that a water heater lasted 38 years just tells me that they don't make 'em like they used to.

Of course, I have only one association with 38 years. For those in the dark, that's how long Dorothy and Stan Zbornak's marriage lasted before ending in a bitter divorce. Dorothy references the length of her marriage in many a Golden Girls episode, so it's only natural that it's the first thing I would think of. When Heidi e-mailed me to inform me of the new water heater, I e-mailed back with "38 years of memories and laughter and fighting!" Man, that show still holds up after all these years.

So in honor of that, I've named the new water heater "Chrissy" because that was the name of the woman for whom Stan left Dorothy after 38 years. Let's hope that our relationship with this Chrissy lasts longer than Stan & Chrissy's relationship on the show did.