An inauspicious start to the long weekend

I think the whole fambly got up on the wrong side of the bed. My day started like this:

12:45am. I'm sound asleep. The Mrs. starts poking me.

Me, CherkyB: "Huh???"
The Mrs.: "Is it going to beep like that all night?"
Me, CherkyB: "What?"
The Mrs.: "The oven."
Me, CherkyB: "I don't know."

Then I went right back to sleep. See, The Mrs. had been noting rather frequently how we had to clean our oven before listing the house. Well, our oven is self-cleaning. But we used to have a bird, and you're not allowed to run an oven on self-clean when you have a bird in the same general area. So we've self-cleaned our oven I think twice since we've gotten it for the top oven and maybe once for the bottom. Both needed it.

I was doing dishes last night, and The Childrens were up in bed. I decided that'd be a great time to self-clean the bottom oven cuz we wouldn't be needing it any more that night, and there'd be no chance of a little child poking at it while it was mega-hot. I started up the bottom oven on self-clean. You can only self-clean one oven at a time due to, I imagine, heat and electrical constraints. The self-clean runs for 3.5 hours. I guess I started it around 9:15pm given when The Mrs. woke me up to complain about the beeping.

Now, being an incredibly sharp person, I was able to figure out a nuber of things in between when I said, "I don't know," and when i fell asleep immediately thereafter. The first was that the oven beeps when it is done with the self-clean. The second was that I could not hear the beeping. The third was that if The Mrs. was so darned disturbed by the inaudible beeping, she could walk downstairs and hit the "cancel" button just as easily as I could. More easily, in fact, since she was both closer and still awake.

Fast-forward to the morning. I was awakened by little MaxieC. He had climbed into bed next to me, and was poking at me. I was lying there, trying to ignore him. Then he said, "Daddy! Look at this!" I rolled over to see what he wanted, and he smacked me in the eye with the nosecone of a plastic airplane.


Me, CherkyB: "Ow!"
MaxieC: "Airplane!!!"

Oh, to be two again.

I spent most of the rest of the day so far trying to find a replacement spring for the front door handle. I don't want to replace the whole handle, cuz there are 5 identical handles in the entryway: the double front door, the closet, and then the double doors into the dinette. I'd have to replace them all in order to make them match. I went to a total of 5 locksmith shops. I learned that very few locksmith shops are open today. Of the two that were open, the first guy said he could maybe, maybe order the part, but I'd have to come back Wednesday for him to say for sure. The second guy said that they hadn't made a spring system like this in 20 years and that no replacement parts were available since it was a pretty cheap set even when it was brand new. He recommended total replacement.

I went home determined to fix it. I took apart one of the other handle sets and looked how the spring should be. The ends of circular spring are bent out at 90 degree angles against a couple of spring stops, and one of these bends was broken off. I putterred around with it and managed to unwind the broken end a half turn, rotate the spring a half turn, and then put a new bend in the unwound section. Hah! Works perfectly.

The Mrs's reaction: "You should have done that a year and a half ago."