So my birthday is Monday, and I'm dreaming of shopping. I was planning on going shopping for myself, all by myself, in an actual store today or yesterday. Unfortunately my cooking range went all crazy sometime recently and started pulling insane amounts of power for everything. My last electric bill was about double what it normally is, and considering Elliott and I were gone for 2.5 weeks of that time, I knew something was up. I noticed it when I looked at it online to get some other piece of information, and it was only 3 days past when it had been read. Normally I don't even look at it until I get ready to pay it 10 days or so after it was read, so we really lucked out there! Anyway, so on the 4th day after it was read, my husband went outside to look at the meter, and make sure they read it right. It turns out that in those 4 days we had already used more electricity than we normally do in a full month! But the meter was barely moving, so we were fairly certain it wasn't just the meter going crazy. So down I went into the basement, while my husband stood outside staring at the meter. I flipped each of the circuit breakers off one at a time to see if there was any change. And when I got to the range one, I had a sudden realization that it was almost certainly it going bad. For the last few weeks it has been randomly heating up the oven when I have one of the burners on, but a quick hit to the oven knob usually turns it off. My husband decided it was probably a switch and has one ordered, but apparently we don't need it now after all.
So after we turned everything off, and decided that the meter was fine, I decided to run back upstairs and turn the oven on while he watched the meter. It had been on for about 10 seconds when he yelled "Turn it off! It's going crazy out here!" So we unplugged it, and now for the last three days I've been cooking in the microwave, the George Foreman grill, or the deep fat fryer. I'm unsure why it didn't occur to me until last night that I could cook in the slow cooker, but that's how I'm cooking our dinner tonight. The first night it was nice to not have to really cook anything, but by now I'm definitely ready to have my stove back! I don't know how people can go for weeks without using one.
So tomorrow I get to go birthday shopping for a new stove. It would be slightly more exciting probably if we weren't trying so hard to get orders, and get our house ready to go on the market. Plus it's a pretty big expense, especially considering our dogs had shots this week ($157) and my husband needed new $130 gym shoes last week. I am still excited, though. I haven't really liked our stove the whole time I've been here, because one of the coils is a little bit messed up, and the oven over heats sometimes. I'm sure the next owners will appreciate a nice glass top stove that (hopefully) heats evenly. :) And maybe it will help us save on our electricity costs!
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