I am being held hostage by the laundry this morning, hence the spate of blog postings. The washer/dryer gizmo and I have reached a tentative understanding of each others needs. It needs to have every button pressed 1, 2 or 3 times in a very specific sequence in order for it to consider returning our clothing to us in a semi-washed and dried state, and I need only to have hope that this will occur some time before nightfall of the same day.

The other appliances afford similar opportunity for challenging one's mental powers. I spent half a day just figuring out how to make "toast." It turns out that the microwave is also a "toaster" and an oven. The quotation marks are a hint as to how good it actually is at "toasting," but it's still better than waiting for the bread to reach an adequately crispy level of staleness.

The rice cooker seemed simple enough but even with the helpful "directions" of the instruction binder I was actually in tears over this one. Matthew stepped in, with no success that evening. It looks like he was trying telepathy.

The heating/cooling system is Matthew's providence, but he still gets out THE BINDER to ensure the desired result. The trouble with THE BINDER is that although it points us in the right direction, the finer points are mostly left to chance.

On the bright side of the laundry situation, there will be extra room in our suitcases for souvenirs due to our clothes being either shrunk to half their original size or simply destroyed altogether.