Washing Machine Part 1: Not What I Really Wanted for My Birthday, but such is life

So as you may remember from a few blogs back, my washing machine died last month (the day I got my car back).  I was understandably annoyed, but what can you do, right?  I couldn't afford a new one right away (remember I'd just spent big bucks getting my car repaired).  Thankfully, my parents live close by and they have a functional washing machine, which they let me use a couple of times (including on Thanksgiving, nothing says Happy Thanksgiving like Hi Mom and Dad, I'm going to do 3 loads of laundry in between eating turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, etc).  Additionally, one evening not too long after the machine died my fiance and I had plans to go to his parents house so we brought some laundry with us.  Someone (actually two people) suggested I call someone in town who is good at fixing washing machines.  I called him the week before Thanksgiving and after playing some phone tag, finally arranged for him to come look at my machine the day before Thanksgiving.   Like the cable company, the man gave me a 3 hour window (I'll be there between 9 and 12) and called around 11:55 to say he'd be there in a few minutes.  Can you imagine saying that to your boss?  I'll be in sometime between 9 and noon today.  Anyway, he showed up, told me what was wrong and gave me an estimate of how much it would cost to fix.  And for him to do that cost $60 dollars!  Can I please make $60 to show up for a 5 min appointment?  Don't get me wrong, the guy was nice enough, I knew it was going to cost $ for him to look at it, etc, but seriously, I pretty much threw $60 away.  He also told me to call Kenmore and see if I could find out how old the machine was because it were really old, I might want to get a new machine since they only last so long.  It took some searching, but I was finally able to find out that my machine was 19 years old.  I would have much rather spent the $260-$320 to have the machine fixed than spend the over $1000 for a new one (it's a washer/dryer combo so I couldn't just buy a washing machine), but since the machine was so old, it seemed best to get a new one.  Bring on the empty checking account.  Lucky (or not) for me, my birthday was close by so my parents and my fiance's parents offered to give me money in lieu of a gift to put toward the new machine.  Thank you parents and future in-laws!  So two days after Thanksgiving, it was off to buy a new washing machine/dryer combo or what I like to call, "time to empty my checking account."  My fiance and I picked one out, paid for it (it cost $200 less than we thought) and all looked good.    (Of course as you can probably tell from the title having a "Part 1," things didn't go quite according to plan, you'll just have to come back tomorrow to find out what happened).