Ian’s Shots and a New Washing Machine

I know, what a combination. But that’s what the headlines are today. 🙂

This morning, I loaded Miranda and Ian into the bicycle trailer, and we headed over to the Family Centre on Townsend to get Ian his one-year immunization. This week we bought Ian a bicycle helmet since he’s big enough to ride in the trailer with Miranda. He doesn’t like the helmet much, but then neither did Miranda when she was that age. He calms right down when the bike is in motion.

He had four shots, two in each arm, one from each arm in the muscle and the other in the flesh. Let’s just say he didn’t enjoy the experience one bit. Poor baby. I sat with him in the waiting room to make sure he didn’t have any adverse effects, then pedaled on home. The shots were two variations on pneumonia/meningitis, MMR and chicken pox.

Then the next big thing today was the new washing machine.

Our Maytag, which we bought new when we moved into the house in May 2003, had the main bearing go bad. The bill to fix it would have been $400, so we started the odyssey of learning about washing machines. Compared to five years ago, the market has shifted to high-efficiency front-load washers. Both BC Hydro and the Capital Regional District offer rebates for them, adding up to $225. We looked at Sears, the Brick, Future Shop and at the local Home Hardware. We listened to the salespeople, we looked stuff up online. (Incidentally, I found lots of information about how Maytags are complete crap, so evidently we’re not alone in having them pack it in early) Finally we settled on the Frigidaire Affinity 6000, which we could have gotten from either Sears or Home Hardware:

It was a better deal to get it from Home Hardware, since the delivery was only $25 instead of $60 and they could get it to us in two days instead of 10.

It arrived around 3:00 this afternoon. We’ve already run a load of laundry through and it worked as expected.