Howdy, everyone! I’m back!

Alas, moving day is over and it’s back to the saddle again. I’ll tell ya, though; I think I need a vacation from my vacation! What a wild two weeks! And by “wild”, I don’t mean wild in a fun way…

Oh, sure, everyone knows moving can be a traumatic experience. Everything from furniture deliveries, pre-closing construction details, the delivery of those 5000 boxes of belongings from storage, etc. contributes to acceleration of the few hairs left from black to grey. Even returning to work to answer those 135 emails added a little spice to the pie (yeah, I know – some of you think 135 emails in two weeks is nothin’ – if that’s the case, then eat your heart out).

But rather than try to tell it all at once, today I’ll just share this little anecdote.

A few nights ago Mrs. MZM woke me up at 2 am because she was hearing a strange noise in our bathroom.

Now, we all understand that moving into a new place to live is bound to involve a veritable plethora of new and unusual sounds. The thermostat clicks, the new refrigerator’s ice maker clunks, the neighbor’s dog barks, etc., etc., etc. The most dramatic difference is that our former home (condo) was on a major freeway in Houston and was therefore quite noisy, while our new home is comfortably far from all major roads; it’s so quiet you can almost hear your hair grow.

Anyway, there was this weird, distant, extremely high-pitched tone coming from the bathroom, and she couldn’t figure it out, so of course she woke me up. I walked all over the house, trying to pinpoint it, including pressing my ear against walls and windows to see if it made it louder. It didn’t. I went outside – nope. I checked the A/C unit – nope. Television, phones, cell phones – nope, nope, nope.

Finally in desperation I tried flipping every electrical circuit off and on back at the breaker box in the garage to see if one of them had any effect. Wrong again. Sheesh, this was getting really frustrating. I’ve been living in our old condo for fifteen years, and up until now, when something like this happened, we knew who to call. Now, the guy to call is me, and I had no clue!

As usual, Mrs. MZM figured it out first.

Sitting on her vanity is an old radio/cassette player we bought at a garage sale many years ago (I think we paid a buck for it) and she listens to it every morning while putting on makeup. It’s the kind where the TAPE setting also functions as an off switch when there’s no tape in it. Well, since the tape player failed long ago we never put a tape in it. In fact, I had even verified during my search that the switch was on the TAPE/OFF setting.

What I missed was the Fast Forward button had been pushed (probably while in the moving box). This was enough to eventually cause the motor circuit to produce the wayward high-pitched tone that has so thoroughly mystified us for over an hour. As soon as she pushed the STOP button on the tape player, the noise was gone! Relief at last!

I’m reminded of that little cartoon, “Hit any key”. Somebody hand me a hammer.