Seventeen Years On

In a little over a week, we will have been married for seventeen years. We've been here in Michigan for five of those seventeen years, hard as it is to believe. Five years of snow, growing kids, serious lack of traffic, and little-town experiences.

With all the changes in our lives over the past seventeen years, it's nice to have a few solid, stable things to hang on to.

Like vacuum cleaners.

It's one of the first things a young couple buys together when they're creating a new home, something that signals a commitment to keep things together, keep it clean, keep it presentable. You don't spend serious money on something like a vacuum cleaner if you don't plan on making it last. You know you're in it for the long haul, because you know you're going to be dragging the little red plastic canister out of the closet nearly every weekend to make the place livable.

Eventually, it dies. It's plastic and metal. It wears out. It cracks. It fades. It shorts out. You replace what you can as things break, but at some point, you just say, "Enough". And head back to Sears.


Yeah, we could've gone out and bought one of those fancy two thousand dollar jobs that pull every little dust speck from underneath the floorboards - and do your taxes, too - but we're the type of people who like to reward good service with our loyalty.

Kenmore. It's served us well for nearly seventeen years. We plan on using it for another seventeen. Or twenty. Or whatever.

Happy Anniversary, old Kenmore. You done good.



Welcome to the family, new Kenmore. Live long and prosper.