No, I really can’t lift it (and you probably can’t either)

See the broken belt hanging down?

I was heading out the door this morning for the 9:30 service at church. I greet there the first and third Sundays and of course today is the first Sunday in October.

I pressed the garage door opening, and it made the normal noise for about a second, then stopped. Huh, I thought, maybe I didn’t really press the button? So I tried again and got the same results. This time, I knew for sure I’d pushed the button properly and when it didn’t open again, I sort of stood there staring at the door. I tried one more time, realized that nope, it wasn’t going to open so I ran inside and emailed the woman who coordinates all the greeters to let her know I was stuck at home.

You might remember that I’ve tried before to open the garage door manually—I tried after the lightning strike that fried the motor but couldn’t even budge it. We have just the one garage door across a two car garage. It’s solid wood, and original from 1958.

Fortunately, I brought my work laptop home on Friday, the way I always do. Here’s hoping that the company that just installed this new motor can get out to our place tomorrow.

It's electric

If we’re connected on Facebook, you already know we had some damage last night from the fierce storms that swept through the Kansas City area. I was curious, so I just looked up the data for yesterday. We got nearly 2 ½ inches of rain with wind gusts of 49 MPH, plus all the normal lightning and thunder you’d expect in a Kansas thunderstorm.

The lightning that got us didn’t actually sound all that bad; in fact, we now suspect our damage wasn’t from the strike but from the power surge. We thought the router was fried, but the GFI outlet saved it and also saved Kent’s X box and the TV. Our amplifier wasn’t so fortunate.

Our garage door motor is also fried. We were able to get a repairman out today to look at it (yes, he agreed, it’s fried) but he can’t actually replace it until Monday. I’m glad Kent is home because it’s a big door (just one for the two car garage) and very heavy. Lifting it manually is no joke

The biggest loss in terms of cash, though, is our oven. It’s a wall-mounted oven and an unusual size. Even though the oven isn’t anything special, it’s expensive. You can see it on the left, it's on the bottom. The top is a microwave (which wasn't damaged—isn't that weird?). We’ve got an appliance person coming out tomorrow in hopes that the service call will result in replacing the circuit board (boards? Might have more than one) rather than the entire oven. Otherwise we're looking at $4k or more.

Then a friend surprised me today with this—she knows it’s been a tough couple of months for us and wanted to send something as a show of support: