My Grandmother's Clock (reprise)

The clock is literally timeless as it has been stopped at 10:05 for years. Various efforts at getting it going over the years have failed, probably because the mercury filled pendulum is quite temperamental and almost needs to be repaired in situ.  A gentleman I got to talking to in an antique store even offered to make a house call and see what he could do, but I never took him up on it. I do miss the sound of the striker which chimes the hour and the half hour. I remember many an overexcited Christmas Eve night when I couldn't sleep and listened to the clock chime each hour.

I also think it is timeless for another reason. There is a fine line between 'dated' and timeless but I think an elegant old clock that has survived for 150 years, qualifies for the title. I wonder if kids today even know how to tell time when it doesn't appear before them in illuminated digits, but in elegant old numerals?

For the same reason, I think books are pretty timeless too. Even with the advent of ebooks most of us who use them still admit to preferring hard copies and some of us even confess that we still buy hard copies of books that we have particularly enjoyed. 

Our microwave, which is shoved in. a cubbyhole underneath the kitchen counter stopped working yesterday. I suggested that we had blown a circuit and John went down in the garaged and confirmed that the circuit breaker had switched off. I flipped the switch and we plugged it back in again but it still didn't work. John texted David who came over and educated John on the proper flipping of the circuit breaker switch. Last time he came over for a similar electrical problem, he brought John's attention to a whole set of circuit breakers that he hadn't noticed.  

I have been dealing with the insurance agent in Los Angeles who has been handling our search for another insurer. I asked John to call him for a progress report because I thought it would be good for him to be in the loop, but when he called, he was out to lunch. Of course he called back on my phone so I wound up talking to him anyway. He told me that his wife is from here and he knows the area well and finds it much easier to deal with insurance issues here than in LA, so he has a lot of clients here.
He can do everything by phone and email, including payments, but it all involves locating and sending lots of documents and photographs. I'll leave the locating part to John. He has a pretty efficient filing system, but I have no idea how it works.

I guess taxes and insurance are pretty timeless too, just not in such a good way.