!@#$%&*. . .

Eager to spend as much time as possible in the studio, and particularly excited to use my newly repaired (HA!) oxy concentrator, I fired up the torch at 10.30 am this morning. Everything was going along fabulously, and 30 minutes later, the "Below Normal" light still hadn't lit up - finally, after 4.5 years of working with a defective oxy concentrator, it was fully operational. I was excited beyond belief about the possibility of spending all day working on a new set of beads.

Yes. Well. That excitement lasted for another 4 minutes - until I looked over at it again, and the !@#$%&* "Below Normal" light was blinking its evil yellow glow.

ARGHHHHH.......

So after another 30 minutes of swearing and turning the PSI up and down, I uttered one final !@$%, turned off the torch, and had to seriously restrain myself from kicking the concentrator through the window. With DH Russ away until tomorrow, there's no possibility of him looking at it today.

Seriously though, I'm not really all that surprised. Nothing else that ever goes wrong is simple, or cheap, to repair, (e.g. the THREE kilns I've been through since I started lampworking almost 6 yrs ago, the dishwasher that died 4 weeks ago that cost me $480 to repair, the ducted evaporative cooling system in the house that has been making weird grinding noises for months and has been quoted at costing us $4000 to replace [and we completely gave up on ever fixing it, and instead forked out $2500 for air conditioning]), so why should the !@$#% oxy concentrator be any different? I need a drink.

Oxy concentrator 1, Sue 0.