

As you take in these now same-ish looking pix of the kitchen in motion you might notice a hole next to the imaginary sink, where soon will be in place our much dreamt of glories of glories, a built-in
automatic dishwasher.
We never had dishwashers growing up, MB and I. Ours was the way of hot water and suds, dishpan hands and all that. Since adulthood we've been spoiled though, at least until we moved here to Palazzo Dilapidato. No dishwasher was ever installed here, such gross decadance not at all in keeping with taste of the former proprietors, but when we moved in I found a used portable dishwasher to do the job. That's one of those deals where you roll it across the floor, squeeze the valve up onto your faucet, turn the hot water on full blast and then get big squirts up your nostrils when you didn't do it right.
It's been a fairly wonderful device actually, doing a great job and being pretty easy to use. But the noise the thing makes is unbelieveable, really rather like the Who at Leeds in 1969. Having to wait it out so one can turn off the water at the end of the cycle is not much fun either.
Anyway, here comes a shiny new one, to be built-in and everything. This really is no kidding the main reason we are finally doing our kitchen, so we can walk away from the dishwasher... And therein hangs one more small tale. Small digression: are you as tired as I am of being polled for customer satisfaction at every turn? It seems that no matter where you go or what you want to do someone is always asking how great it was or wasn't to use/eat/visit/live through their whatever. Response rates to these endless polls has gotten so low that companies have resorted to bribes, like sweepstakes and drawings if only you will give them a grade, any grade.
Well I'm here to tell you, gentle reader, that it might be worth your while to keep on giving them what they want.
About a year ago I was asked and at a moment of weakness agreed to give Best Buy some feedback on delivery of a fridge. Of course I forgot all about it until about four months later when a plain envelope arrived from Best Buy with no accompanying note, merely a gift card for $500. This is what's paying for our faboo new built-in shiny etc dishwasher.
Best Buy being Best Buy and Ithaca being Ithaca, of course the local store didn't have much on hand to offer. They had about a half dozen models of dishwashers, either really low end (buy em for your rental) stuff or super expensive whizz bang models. Nothing to speak of in the middle. So we found what we wanted from their website, and a mere six weeks later, if the gods of freight and commerce smile upon us, we should have safely nestled in the bosom of our home one more little labor saving slave to our consumer desire...