Thank you for the wonderful comments on my last post. However, I realized it this morning that I had posted my content for my family page here. Ooops. My bad. I decided to leave it up here, and just duplicated the post (and gave it a post date of yesterday) where it was supposed to be, at:
www.melissaryanandkeira.blogspot.com
Getting back to this site, I have a lot of randomness. I thought I didn't have much until I started writing a ton. The main thing that I wanted to write about was my dishwasher. I think all of my facebook friends are probably sick of hearing about it, but I figured I would do one final review of it and then be quiet.
The one we bought is
here. It is the Samsung 24" Tall Tub Built in Dishwasher,
Model: DMT300RFB/XAA
We bought it from Best Buy, but it was on sale for a much better deal than the link shows right now (although I do imagine it may change depending on when you read this).
Background. I hate all dishwashers. I have not been able to find one that I love. I am beginning to think my expectations are too high. We always hand wash our pots and pans, and are used to a dishwasher in our condo that didn't clean anything unless it was rinsed almost entirely clean anyway. We initially had a super tiny dishwasher that was so small it had to be run everyday for just two people, and as a result, you could put really dirty stuff in there because we always ran it before anything had the chance to dry on. I had only wished it was a bigger dishwasher. However, what I know now, is that maybe it only worked well because we nothing ever sat more than an hour or so. After finally deciding we wanted a new dishwasher, partially because we were getting ready to sell our place (back in 2004ish), we replaced the stove and dishwasher. That dishwasher was OK, especially if you used really expensive liquid detergent. It didn't do well with powder. You really had to rinse things, and it was LOUD! I never knew how loud it was because we always ran it at night while we were asleep or while we were out. We learned how loud it was more recently when my parents started sleeping on the couch we had in our kitchen (yes, we had a couch in our kitchen, it was a weird room) within the last 2 years. It did a decent job. I had sort of wished we hadn't gone so bare bones with it, but it never smelled bad or left big chunks of food in the bottom. I think we had a band aid that fell in once and stayed in for a while, but it was nothing like the dishwasher that was in our new house. I'll get to that in a minute. It also had a big old knob on the front with a timer to set it to delay wash (which was why it always ran at night), and when you set it, it ran. It occassionally would spread seasonings or oatmeal over the whole contents, though, if you put one really dirty dish in there. It dried OK, but I liked to have it sit open for a bit before unloading to let the stuff finish drying. Next up, we had our dishwasher in our temporary apartment. This one cleaned just fine (we used super cheap detergent without any problems), but had the silverwear in the door, so it was always flopping everywhere. It also had some fancy electronic panel that I never seemed to be able to get right. I was always resetting it instead of turning it on. When I got it to work, it worked great. However, it was probably 50/50 for if I actually ran it when I wanted. I would do it at night, and push the start button. It didn't really have much feedback if you started it or not. It was very quiet at the beginning, so I never knew if it really started, and sometimes pushed it again, which would actually turn it back off. So, if I pushed on it an odd number of times, it ran, and even, it didn't. I finally would just push it and wait several minutes to see what it did after getting tired of waking up with dirty dishes. We didn't have a ton of dishes in the apartment, so if it didn't run, I had to hand wash at least some of the stuff to be able to get the kids and myself breakfast in the morning. Annoying! Finally, we have the dishwasher from the house. Since I am somewhat a dishwasher hater, when I opened it up and looked inside, I instantly was not happy. It had lime scale all over the whole thing, as well as smelled funky. I thought I was just being overly picky, and put some brand new dishes in it that were straight out of the package in it. I ran it, and it got food crud all over our new dishes. SO NASTY! I looked into cleaning it, but I wasn't doing it myself. After closer inspection, there was rotten food remains gumming up the bottom of the dishwasher and the sprayer arms. If there wasn't food blocking a sprayer, there was lime scale. I did run it empty a few times on sanitize, but that didn't do much. It was just plain foul, and when our microwave broke, I had the repairman give me his assessment of the dishwasher since he was already there. He was sort of a jerk, but said it wouldn't be covered by any sort of warranty (I was wondering if the hard food disposal had broken perhaps (???), but this one didn't have one at all), and that it would cost hundreds to clean professionally, and might not even work. Ugh. That was the end of me using that dishwasher, and for about 2 weeks, we didn't have a dishwasher at all. I have bad ezcema, and it came back all over my hands from washing dishes by hand everyday. I couldn't wait for the dishwasher to arrive. We had a small issue with getting it scheduled from Best Buy. I am not sure if it was Best Buy's fault or their contractor, but we were initially told we would be called within 48 hours of our purchase to set up the installation. That never happened. We called them repeatedly and never got a call back. Ryan went into the store and they gave us some money back for our trouble, and finally got it scheduled. It was much different than when we got our washer and dryer from them. We bought it in MI and had it delivered in KY. We had the date set before we left the store. Apparently this is because the drivers can install a washer/dryer, but not a dishwasher. That explained the difference in experiences. Anyway, the guys that installed the dishwasher were the best contractors we had in the house since we got there. They were polite, didn't damage anything, and were non-smokers, so they didn't reek like several of the other people we had in the house. They did need to borrow an old towel, but whatever. We have tons of those, and towels were one of the first things unpacked after the bedding, so we knew where they were.
We finally got the dishwasher up and running. I was thrilled to just have a dishwasher. I am actually glad I was without a dishwasher for so long because it made me appreciate this one even more. The main plus with it is that it has a hard food disposal built in that I don't need to clean out. Yeah! No cleaning gunk out of the bottom of a dishwasher. I am not thrilled with the rack. I wasn't at the store when I saw it, but we bought it anyway because it had the hard food disposal. The top rack is stair stepped, so it is deeper over the silverwear basket. I don't like this because we would put tall plastic spatulas and serving spoons in our dishwasher basket, and we can't now because they are too tall. However, we do have a whole row where we can wash 20oz podium bottles. In our dishwasher at the condo, we could only fit 2 at a time due to the prongs and the height combined. However, we only have 3 that can go in the dishwasher anyway, so we managed just fine. The prongs on the bottom rack are in 3 pairs, and don't line up all the way across. This makes it hard to put in more than one or two baking racks or large cutting boards at a time. They are also really close together on the bottom, so only 1 pyrex baking dish fits at a time unless it is really leaned and taking up a lot of room. The top rack has the prongs really far apart for the rows, but close together in each row. It makes it hard to fit our bowls, and our glasses are skinnier than the rows, so they tend to fall down because they fit between the prongs, not over them. I feel like we have to run it about every day and a half, instead of every 2 days like our old one at the condo, just because I don't feel like we can pack it as full. It does clean pretty well. Perhaps this is because we can't pack it as full as the old one. It dries about as well as the old one, so I do like to let it air dry a bit before unloading. We have really hard water here, so we are using a rinse aid. I had never used it before, so I am not 100% sure how it works. We might be using too much, I am not sure. Our new glasses seem very nice and clean, but our older ones seem a big foggy. I don't know if this is because they have more residue in general from being old or what. The thinner glasses seem worse than the thicker ones. I am not sure if this is from the hard water or the rinse aid.
The verdict: This dishwasher is OK. It is acceptable. It is a million times better than the funky dishwasher that made things dirtier that was left in the house when we moved it. I like that is has postive feedback when you turn it on. I am not sure if it has a delay wash or not. It is quiet, so it doesn't really matter though.
Sorry for the super boring post. Other than the dishwasher, I haven't been up to much. I miss my MI friends, and am in the process of making new friends. I finally met the wife of my neighbor who qualified for 70.3 worlds. I am a bit bummed that she isn't as hardcore as her husband, but she is super nice so that is great. They have 4 children, and their youngest is Soren's age. I finally know where their house is. We might walk down there this afternoon after I get my butt off the floor and to the gym. I am having a good hair day and procrastinating my swim. I better do it soon, because we are out of bread and I don't want to be starving by the time I get to the store. I haven't been involved enough yet with the Landsharks to know the right group of ladies. So far, I am either a lot faster or a lot slower than everyone I have met. I have not yet found that in between group, the "riff-raff of the elite", as I felt I was. I hung out with a lot of the area's best in MI, but I wasn't quite good as them. I would do a ride or run and could hang for their slow pace and really push myself at my hard pace to keep up. I really improved this way. I haven't tried to ride with Ryan's groups yet, and I don't know the area here enough if I were to get dropped. Ryan is still trying to find a long fast ride too for him.The no drop rides I have been doing are more of a social event for me. I enjoy them, but I don't think I will get better from doing them. I miss my TIA workouts where I was a middle of the pack rider and I could hang on the run.
Finally, I am not sure what to wear for my underpants run. Our church has been beating modesty into the children's brains the past 2 weeks that I have been serving as a Primary teacher. Ryan has said he officially doesn't care if I go or what I wear, but his availability is unsure. I may need to find a neighbor to watch the kids for a couple hours. I don't think I want to wear real underwear, but more of either a bathing suit or sports bra. I think I threw out the suit that would be the best. Cristina suggested Wonder Woman underoos, but when I checked online, they were pretty pricey ($35) for something to wear for a silly race. I saw some cute patagonia boy short underwear, but they were expensive too. At least they would be more useful than underoos in the grand scheme of things, but Ryan said I wasn't allowed to buy anything new for this. Any suggestions?
