Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Ah, gentle reader. It started out so promising.

The day we left for Branson last week, that is, late Sunday morning, my beautiful wife was preparing to roast some pecans in the oven when she heard a pop, and the oven did not heat up. Ah, heating element again.

You might remember the saga last year:

To be clear: Apparently, this part shipped from St. Louis, Missouri, two days later (December 28), and:

• Arrived and left the carrier facility in St. Louis twice.
• Arrived in Kansas City on January 1, and then left the facility twice.
• Arrived in Springfield facility January 2, last Thursday, twice.

And there it sits. It is still scheduled to arrive by Wednesday, after I ordered it and twelve days since it shipped from St. Louis. Which is a three hour drive away. For some reason, it was routed through Kansas City for a week.

I guess I did not follow-up on that experience, but that particular part was shipped from St. Louis unpadded in a 1″ tall cardboard box which arrived bent, and the heating element in it was bent 20 degrees itself. So, unusable. I was able to return it even though the Amazon seller was a Ukrainian(!) company shipping from St. Louis or something–probably used parts from a junkyard or something. But they gave me a refund, and I got a heating element from a US-based (maybe) source and installed it.

Well. It lasted a year. But I ordered another from the same seller on Amazon (ending my tweehad against them for the moment)–getting ready to leave for the week, I felt too rushed to look at appliance parts sellers themselves on the Internet, and it was only when I was in Branson that I thought I hope I didn’t just order from the Ukrainian company again. But it came properly packaged and intact.

And since I had already done this and because it’s basically two 1/4 bolts and two screws to attach the leads, I had the oven up and running in under a half an hour.

So, on Sunday, I decided to crack open the refrigerator. Again.

Pretty much since we got the refrigerator, it would rattle when the compressor/evaporator fan stopped. But late last year, it started getting louder and rattling longer, so I figured I would take a look at it. Which means I would have Nico take a look at it.

A couple of years ago, I successfully defrosted the frozen drain line from the frost-free freezer, so I was unafraid.

I’d done some research, and the things on YouTube (which featured far younger refrigerators than this one, which is 26 years old and has metal parts in it) indicated it might be dirty coils or ice buildup on the coils leading to the fan nicking the ice. It might have been motor bearings. We cleaned it out, and it looked as the fan was running smoothly, but it did rattle when running. The shaft holding the fan on had a couple millimeters of give where it could go into and out of the motor that far. I guessed that it would be something we could live with whilst I researched maybe replacing the fan and/or motor.

But it seemed like the fan was running more frequently than previously. Several times an hour, it rattled for the length of the runtime. After I closed it back up, my wife said it sounded different. Perhaps I left the sheet metal on the back a little loose? After dinner, I thought to look at the temperature controls to see if maybe they might have changed. And the freezer was set to the absolute lowest setting. A-ha! I thought. When I tried to dial it up, though, it resisted and then popped. But now the fan was permanently on. Not good.

So, after a couple hours of listening to the beating of his tell-tale heart rattling fan, I had us move the contents of the 26-year-old refrigerator to the 45-year-old drink refrigerator behind the bar downstairs while we explore our options (buy a new refrigerator with an expected life of 10 years).

Not without some self-doubt, gentle reader, not without some self-doubt. My father’s handy angel on my right shoulder encourages me to fix it (and expresses silently doubt that I can), but that might involve a cycle of ordering a $60 part, nope, that’s not it, ordering a $60 part, no, that’s not it until I listen to the devil of modern disposable culture on the left. So, yeah, we’re getting a new refrigerator.

Next internal conflict: Do I keep this refrigerator to try to fix it in my spare time? Well, no. The garage does not have room for it. And maybe I should actually get into the habit of taking care of things before I get these ambitions. So, no, they’ll haul it away and either recycle it or fix it and resell it. Which I could do myself were I so inclined, but history has shown I have not been so inclined.

Maybe the theme of the year should be Get away from the damned desk and take care of things.

At any rate, I have ordered an extra heating element for the oven. Which might end up cluttering the garage and its museum of parts for appliances Brian J. fixed but then got sick of and replaced (with several dryer wheel kits for an old Whirlpool dryer and tub suspension rods for a Samsung washer).

And, wait a minute. Does the exhaust fan motor sound different?

Ah, gentle reader. The bath toys.

It was 2013 when 2013 when I lamented that my children would grow up and not want Mr. Bubble baths and their bath toys:

I’ve already gamed it out: the older boy will one day decide Mr. Bubble is for babies, much like he decided at one point that Sesame Street is for babies, and that will be that. Perhaps the younger will hold out hope for another dash of the Mr. Bubble at some point, but he’ll follow his older brother’s lead, and he’ll stop asking for toys in the bathtub and for bubbles.

Eventually, the toys will get cleaned up and donated to a church sale or some such collection, but the last bottle of Mr. Bubble will just migrate to the rear of the cabinet. Periodically, I’ll clean and rearrange the contents of the cabinet, but I won’t want to dispose of half a bottle of Mr. Bubble. Eventually, I’ll say I’m saving it for the grandchildren, but I’ll not really know if I’m to have my line continue or if I’ll live to see it.

I mentioned in 2021 that the toys were gone:

I know, gentle reader, I suffer more last times for everything than actually occur (for example, the bottle of Mr. Bubble mentioned in The Future Forgotten Bottle of Mr. Bubble actually got used up, another secured, and that one used up, so there is currently no half-empty bottle of Mr. Bubble to be forgotten, but the bath toys are long gone now).

Ah, but as I noted in 2024:

But in 2013, when writing about The Future Forgotten Half-Empty Bottle of Mr. Bubble, I mentioned their bath toys, and in 2021, I said the bath toys were long gone, but I must have meant that their playing with bath toys was long gone, as the bath toys are still in the bin under the sink in the hall bath.

No more.

In this, the year of our lord 2026, I have taken the bin out, discarded the sponges, and bleach-washed the toys for actual donation.

The impetus of this drastic action: I needed the bin. My oldest, a man now (albeit a young one), has a collection of grooming products with which he clutters the vanity in the hall bath. As part of my cleaning this weekend, I wanted to put those things in the bin and under the sink. So I finally dealt with the bath toys.

In 2024, I also mentioned old videos:

But as I am who I am, I accumulated a bunch of videocassettes and whatnot for my children. Actually, I bought a bunch before we even thought of having children when I was doing the Ebay thing around the turn of the century.

So I have a bit of a conundrum now: What to do with the portion of the Nogglestead video library (and book library) which is geared toward children? So I box them up and store them for eventual grandchildren? Try to sell them (who watches old videocassettes these days except me?).

Ah, you know, sometime in December, I culled the video library of a number of these titles. But I left them on the floor by the video shelves, obscured by the unused weight bench in our family room, and it was also only this weekend where I put them in a box and put them onto the table downstairs because I expected my beautiful wife might want to pick through them. Mr. Popper’s Penguins with Jim Carrey. Which I didn’t watch with the boys even when the youngest was in his penguins phase. I think I have the G.I.Joe complete cartoon series box set in it; I might have to pull that one out. But it will likely remain on the table for weeks if we don’t need the table for something else in the meantime.

But these two things do underline the slow pace of change at Nogglestead. Which is to say nothing changes, and that leads to some weird sense-of-time dilation in my own head for sure.

Perhaps part of my get away from the damned desk theme for the year should be to make some changes around Nogglestead. Maybe finally paint the shed red as I’ve hoped to for some time. Maybe clean the garage, which is an effort I started last year and got away from.

I’m actually writing a poem on this theme. Well, I started a poem on this theme. But I’ve set it aside as I have finished the first part of the two- or three-part poem and will pick it up again when I get a good feeling for the turn in it. Or, given my recent (as in, within the last sixteen years) history, maybe never.

Ah, gentle reader. The annual tradition continues. After we hurriedly put away the Christmas decorations in early January, we find some decorations that have escaped notice and need to be put away later. Since I cleaned the whole house this weekend, I think I got a pretty good handle on what was left behind this year.

The sleighbells on the door.

This is almost an annual tradition, and I think that we had them on the door for most of the year once.

I have mentioned the story of before, so I won’t bore you with it again. In addition to the stiffness of the belt leather holding it these days, we don’t hear them jingle because people don’t tend to come through our front door. We open the door once every couple of weeks for packages, but the number of guests to Nogglestead these days is not very large. And those who come often come through the garage.

The Winter/Christmas Village Buildings.

To be honest, perhaps my beautiful wife, who collected the tchotchkes whilst I wrestled with unwrapping the well-wrapt lights on the upstairs Christmas tree, did not recognize that these winter scenes were now Christmas decorations. After all, it’s possible she has noticed them before Christmas individually–I buy a Christmas decoration before we have the Christmas decorations out to cheer myself and to see if anyone notices, and I bought the church in 2024 and the coffee shop 2025. So she might have thought they were just part of the décor.

By the way, has anyone noticed? Well, as part of our actual Christmas decorations, I found a new tchotchke on the mantel which I’d never seen and didn’t acquire. So I think my oldest has noticed and added one of his own.

A couple of boxes for decorations.

I pulled these empty boxes when undecorating the tree. One of the boxes is for a Chewbacca ornament which I don’t know that I have ever seen (not the Easter Chewbacca, which did not come with a box). The other is a little hearth candle holder which I’ve seen, but is one of the decorations which I’ve not been eager to put out because of young children (no longer young) and kittens (no longer kittens, but still kittenish chaos on twelve paws).

I guess at some point, we put the decorations out, and when it came time for the rapid deChristmasification, we put the decorations away but not in their boxes.

You know, gentle reader, I think this year we will have an audit of our Christmas decorations. We have so many that do not actually get put out for one reason or another (or horizontal surfaces are limited and cat-patrolled). So perhaps we should sort them, divest ourselves of some, and make sure to properly box the ones we will keep. Properly box until the next time we take the decorations down.

A little oil lamp.

This little piece of unknown inheritance was located on the bookshelves behind the television, and when my wife swept the lower level, she did not look closely to the bookshelves since most of them are double-stuffed with books.

At any rate, they are all put away now. And as part of the housecleaning, I played a game of “Christmas ornament or cat toy?” Ah, gentle reader, as you know, to a cat, they are one and the same, which explains why sometimes Christmas ornaments are found months later in an opposite corner of the room from the Christmas tree. But, dang it, don’t they sometimes look the same. A little bell and a tailing ribbon. Uh…. No place for a hook, cat toy? I think I’ve answered correctly in all cases so far.

So this should be the annual Christmas Straggler post. But, as always, no guarantees. Stay tuned for further updates (if any).

(Previous Christmas Stragglers covered in 2012, 2013, 2018, 2019, 2021, ,2022, and 2023.)

Ah, gentle reader, you are correct. It was quiet around here for a couple of days. You might have panicked, if you even visited Monday through Wednesday at all, thinking that I, like Wirecutter or Animal, had hung it up or drastically reduced the output. Oh, but no such luck for those relying on the Chinese Large Language Models training themselves up on the inanity that this site has provided over the last twenty-three (almost) years–if your legal brief prefixes with the clause “As the Philosopher says” while quoting a Richard Marx song, it’s as good as a watermark–I have not quit. But I did take a little trip down to Branson.

But, Brian J.! you exclaim. Didn’t you just take a trip to Florida? I did! That, as I mentioned, was a “marketing package” from a timeshare company which we’d booked early in 2024 and had to use by January 2026, so we had to use it.

This trip, though, was one of my beautiful wife’s “annual retreats” where she books a couple days in a resort in Branson in the off-season and uses the quiet (which means no boys to distract her) to work on self-improvement or focus on her Web sites, conference talks, or whatnot. As my contracts are currently in abeyance for the holidays (hopefully are in abeyance and not have ended), she invited me along. So I went.

We were booked in a one bedroom unit in (The) Falls Village just south of Branson’s main area. I put (The) in parentheses because the resort name appears both with and without the article throughout the property. It’s an older property, decently kept up (subject to change since another bigger, snazzier timeshare company has bought it and seems to be focusing its attention on the snazzier properties owned by the previous company). It has an indoor pool and hot tub, a small fitness center, and is walkable to some places (a cat cafe, a diner that serves live country music with its breakfasts).

However, we spent most of the time in the unit (as planned). For starters, one of her current engagements required a lot of her attention (four hours a day), so it was almost just working remotely from remoter in her case. Secondly, Branson is in the off-season: After the Christmas shows close right after the first of the year, the shows go into remission until sometime in March or April, when travelers (not the Roma sort) start making their journeys again and there’s tourist revenue to earn. Some of the indoor attractions are still open, maybe catering to the occasional field trips and safe from the weather, but we’ve been to the most interesting of them. And, finally, we were not eating out at the restaurants that did not also close because we are doing the Whole 30 diet yet (now on day 87, it seems, but just day nine).

So she worked, and I spent most of three days on the unit’s sofa, reading books (unlike the trip to Florida, where I read magazines to discard). So I got a good head start on the Winter Reading Challenge (although a Facebook memory from last year indicates I was through with six books by this time last year, whereas I am only through three and several fractions).

We did take two walks along Table Rock Lake in the state park on a couple of days, and I did hit the fitness center (what to do with only dumbells up to 50 pounds? Reverse pyramids, my boy, reverse pyramids.) in between, but mostly reading.

I did kind of feel bad because all I was doing was relaxing, and she had to work. She, on the other hand, worried I was not having fun because she was working. We reached an uneasy truce of sorts where we assured each other it was all right, but hoped it was so.

So, a couple notes about Branson in the off season:

• The Walmart and the grocery were on lean mixtures. Without the tourists visiting, they had thinner stock than we expected, especially in meat. Normally, we go to the grocery for groceries and the Walmart for sundries, but the thin meat selection sent us to the Walmart (next door) for meat, and we discovered the Walmart is an old-style Walmart with a very thin grocery section. But we got provisions.
   
• Without tourists, the locals were about the only people about. And the locals are about what you would expect from small towns in Missouri but leavened with some foreigners, perhaps guest workers idling until the season resumes or fortunate guest workers who have year-round employment at the hotels and resorts which are still open.
   
• The resort was really quiet. The building we were in has at least 18 units (some are connectible units which are often booked together, but 18 individual rooms are available) on each floor and three floors. To my Ennglish major math, that’s 54 units total. The first night we were there, only three cars were parked by it (by the night before we left, it was up to six or seven cars, but still not very many people). Additionally, the room was very quiet. Nogglestead generally has some background noise–we’re running laundry all day, the dishwasher is going, the downstairs fridge and freezer run their compressors, and the upstairs refrigerator, which has long had a rattling compressor fan, has recently developed more of a rattle and runs very frequently, so the coils are likely dirty and/or frozen (ask me about it in a couple of days, when I will have fixed it or incapacitated our main refrigerator).

  Although we did some laundry, the laundry was in the vestibule between our unit and the “studio” unit which could connect to ours to make a two bedroom unit. We ran the dishwasher after every meal (prepared in-room), and the utility closet provided an intermittent rattle, but for the most part, the room was silent. We did not bring a bluetooth speaker, and the television did not offer its speakers via bluetooth and offered no music channels, so we could not play music. Just…. A lot of silence.
   

The weather was unseasonably warm–highs in the upper 60s and low 70s–so it did not feel like winter at all. It was very odd.

At any rate, it was a nice trip; definitely less stressful than flying (and having to get up at 3am to drive an hour to fly). A working washer and dryer (and no complaining offspring) made for a better trip than this summer (and I didn’t try to work on a hotspot, although it was probably better in Branson proper–my wife did it).

I was eager to come back home, though, and as I mentioned, this year’s theme is Get away from the damned desk. So far, so good.

While I was researching yesterday’s post (that is, reading the Wikipedia entry on the Surfside condominium collapse), it (the Wikipedia entry) mentioned that the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse was the most deadly (non-aviation) engineering failure in history (so far). In that disaster, a walkway loaded with party attendees gave way and collapsed onto a ballroom floor with other partygoers under it.

Ah, gentle reader; I remember the engineering failure that caused it.

I read something about it in a magazine, or perhaps in the hotel itself–might we have stayed there on one of our trips to Kansas City over the years? But I think it was a magazine because I remember seeing a diagram like this:

It has stuck in my head over the years. I’d also say it has informed me of my twee little two-by-four engineering projects around Nogglestead, but probably not much.

Ted Gioia posts Why Secondhand Is Now Better Than New, Or how the thrift store suddenly became cool:

Something unusual is happening in the world of gifting. I saw it during the recent holiday season—and you may have too.

The Wall Street Journal noticed it a few weeks ago. People are now buying secondhand gifts. The sheer numbers are staggering—in a recent survey, 82% of consumers said they’re more likely to purchase pre-owned items for holiday presents.

Ah, gentle reader. As you know, I’ve been doing that for a long time–and I’ve mentioned it from time to time especially since I started doing “Good Album Hunting” posts where my Christmas shopping has resulted in more for me than gift recipients (like this post from 2016).

I have found some delightful things for gifts. And because I have often relied on the Gift Schtick, I’ve found it easier to find Duck Dynasty, Dallas, duck, chicken, flamingo, owl, or eagle-themed gifts at second hand stores. Even now, or at least this year, I noticed an awful lot of owls available, which is what I would have bought for my sainted mother.

In my case, it’s not so much quality but other things that have led me to secondhand stores for gifts. But as they grow popular, the prices will go up, and they’ll have less appeal for me.

I posted earlier today about us seeing the policy activity after a local shooting.

Turns out, on this very date 14 years ago, something similar happened.

Man, right about that time, I was assuredly questioning the safety of my new home. In addition to passing that crime scene, right about the same time we had serial killers at church (who came to Nogglestead for dinner after the unfortunate instance of one of their victim’s dying); the coach of the little league team I also coached and my boys played on shot his wife and killed himself; and someone rang our bell at 4am because the stolen car they were driving broke down or something–he abandoned it and fled from the helpful deputy we summoned to try to help while I waited inside the house cradling a shotgun just in case.

Even worse, on this day eight years ago….

My beautiful wife and I are doing the Whole 30 again this year, which will be our third time through it. You know, it won’t really affect my intake much. I won’t cook bacon or breakfast sausage. I haven’t really eaten as many doughnuts as in the recent past. I won’t have the opportunity to throw in a frozen pizza or something else from the freezer for a quick lunch. I won’t be able to cook a can of beans as a handy side. I’ll not have my nightly portion of wine. I won’t be able to snack on tortilla chips in the evening, which is something I do, what, once a week? No melted cheese tortillas or ham and cheese on rye.

I’ll have to be mindful, and that’s what is difficult, especially at lunch time. I can eat all the raw vegetables I want, and all the nuts I want, and meat and eggs. I’ll have to make sure there’s plenty of things in the refrigerator, so I’ll hard-bake a dozen eggs or two and cook extra cheap steak or chicken for snacking. But I’ll make it through, especially since I get to concentrate on the Winter Reading Challenge, which also starts today.