It broke again!!

I've got a lot to blog about but I don't have so much time because our laundry has been piling up for the last few days. This post really had the potential to be an awesome post and each step along the way I was anticipating the post. Unfortunately the ending isn't as good as it could have been. On Thursday while Shira was out our washing machine stopped spinning. I tried opening the machine again just like last time but I was actually able to find the problem this time. I spotted the broken belt immediately but didn't know where to get the replacement belt so I called the washing machine repair man who had already been to our house twice before. He said it would 290 shekel to fix it and we decided that it wasn't worth it. We went to our local friendly hardware store to see if the owner knew where we could get a new belt. She said we wouldn't be able to find it in Modiin but had to go Talpiot to find it. So this morning Shira and I were off to Yerushalayim to get the replacment belt. We went from store to store until we found a store called Yerucham on Rechov Rechev who had a million different belts. They measured this belt and gave us a replacement that was exactly the same size for 42 shekel. The end of this entry was supposed to be that we came home and I put the belt on and everything worked. Only problem was that I couldn't get the belt on the machine at all. So we called a couple of our friends who are good with this kind of stuff but they couldn't get it either. Finally, someone recommend Yaakov Magrubi who wasn't expensive and was very good. So we called him at 4:30 and he was at our house by 5:30. He noticed that something else was wrong also (actually Rob our neighbor had noticed the same thing) and he put the belt on and fixed the other thing that was broken and moved the dryer back on top. He told me it cost 60 shekel but we were so appreciative that we gave him 100. So let's do a quick calculation: 290 shekel to get it fixed by the laundry guy (as long as he wouldn't have charged us more to fix the other minor problem) vs. 42 for the belt + 100 for Magrubi + 50 for gas to Yerushalayim. So one way of looking at is that we saved 100 shekel but that's really leaving two important things out of the equation. We spent a few hours today trying to get it working so our time is worth money but on the other side we have the satisfaction of almost having fixed it ourselves and not paying the guy 290 shekel just to put a belt on the machine and that's priceless.