Settled In

Hard to believe it's been almost two months since we moved in. She's ordered in enough tons of rock delivered to the driveway and around the house to likely change the tilt of the planet. New orange and blanco oro grapefruit trees have been planted to go with the lemon already here. The pool's been scrubbed, bead blasted, chlorine rinsed, had all the DE baffles replaced, the motor replaced, and the little Nemo sweep disembowled, rehabbed, and thrown back in. The water is warm enough for the grandkids already, still too cold for us.

Everything works except the Dynasty gas stove, which everyone tells us is a really good one, save for the sonic boom explosion and hour or so after it is used. Discomfitting. Seems there was some kind of air lock that trapped some gas in a place it wasn't spose to be, where it malingered until I was just starting to nod off, and then ignites, all at once. KABOOM rattle rattle.

I call the thing "Enola Gay".

Three service calls and a new igniter later, now you can't smell the gas. But today, after 45 minutes of swearing and whanging and flailing by the repairman, who's now become pretty much part of the family, when he fires up the oven, great orange flames roil up the right wall of the baking compartment. I stand aghast, wondering if the little red fire extinguisher is going to be enough or should I run out and drag in a garden hose. "Hmmpf," he says. "That still ain't right." No? asks I, with a vocal quality somewhere between a castrati soprano and a mezzo.

He decides to turn off the gas - ok by me - and says he will insist to the home warranty peeps that theys gets a manufreakingacturer's rep out to reset the demsquibblehitches back to where they should be. In his mind it's my fault for not having the struxion manual. In my mind the jury's still out on God's Gas. The nice rosy glow of electric elements versus a lurking half-ton of iron that could any minute decide it wants to start its launch sequence.