Expiration Date

Apparently, electronics have a built in expiration date that directly correlates to the specific household that it resides in. This past few weeks, it seems that a good chunk of our electronics have decided to die. It turns out they have a most inconvenient expiration date: Unemployment. Yup. That about says it all. Since Josh's recent heave-ho from his job, more than one device decided to catch a 'bug' or something. Our TV is now at about 60- 70% of it's color (depending on the day). The only movies you can successfully watch on it is anything that involves bright colors. I got a viewing of Spiderman in. Turns out that we are still okay watching it because the majority of what we watch is The Wiggles and they are very bright in the color spectrum. Next, our DVD player decided to get possessed by some demon. It officially has a mind of it's own. It will randomly reject DVDs or suck them in before you have a chance to actually load them. This, in turn, causes the DVD to get dragged in against its will leaving lovely little scratches along the bottom. Nice, huh? It works. Just not well. Our sound system has been on the outs for quite some time now, but recently the speakers randomly cut out and start clicking. No idea what that's about. Maybe it's Morse code and it's attempting to plead for a quick and painless death. Now our VCR (yes, we still own one and use it too) has finally decided to give up. When ever you watch something or record something from the TV, it plays back with a loud, annoying humming sound. It's nails on the chalkboard, but the kids have quite a few VHS tapes they are addicted to. The only way I can watch my two shows, Smallville and Vampire Diaries (yes...I'm pathetic), is to either record them and watch them when the kids go to bed or wait till they are released on the internet. Needless to say, I opt for the internet most of the time. On the list of things that no longer work right are my vacuum cleaner (used every other day) and Josh's computer. Ugh. Why these stupid electronics all decided to start dying when unemployment kicked in is beyond my understanding. At least everything still moderately runs. Otherwise we'd be stone agin' it.