I blame Carrie

I like my waffle maker. We haven't had it that long. Was it a wedding present? I can't remember. Reading Carrie's post about how their last trip to our house inspired her to buy (or make John buy) a waffle maker. Reading her post make me get the taste for waffles last weekend. So I inspired her and she inspired me right back. We I got the waffle maker out and cranked it up on Saturday morning for two specific reasons. One was because it sounded good, and the other was because we didn't have anything else in the house for breakfast. Another good part of waffle/pancake fixings is that if you have at least one egg, a little milk, and some oil you can have a heck of a breakfast. So I am sitting in the kitchen making waffles as fast as the boys can eat them when all of a sudden I see a plastic piece sitting next to the waffle maker. I didn't think much of it since with the boys around I usually find all kinds of things sitting on the kitchen counter, but this one looks familiar. So I lift the top half of the waffle maker and try to get the waffle out and the lid drops all the way back and off. Crap. Nothing like wrestling with a hot piece of metal... carefully. I devise that this piece of plastic that is sitting next to the waffle maker is a plastic piece that sits in the hinge and holds the lid on. Then I remember where I saw the similiar plastic piece. It was a couple months ago when I had the waffle maker out back then. I try and put the pastic piece back in, but I can see that it is broken and not going back in. Lucky for me I was on the last waffle so it didn't matter that much. Later I decided to pop on-line and look for a replacement part. I figure I would rather just replace the two pieces of plastic then throw away a perfectly good waffle maker that we really hadn't used that much. I look and look and look and can't find anything for a faberware waffle maker at all. Finally I go to the faberware website and they don't even list a waffle maker as one of the things that they sell. Not a good sign. So I emailed the company and after a couple days I finally got a response. They gave me a number for the parts department. Cool. Maybe I can get away with just some replacement cost. I figure the shipping will be at least twice what the parts price is. So I call the parts department and sit on hold for a couple minutes, finally a guy comes on the phone and gives the schpeel "thank you for calling, this call it monitored, blah blah blah". Then he asks for my name, no problem, then he asks for my phone number, huh? huh ok, then he asks for my address, What? I refuse and ask why he needs my address to look for a part. He tells me that he needs the address in case they need to send me a part. I say how about we see if you have the part first. So I tell him my part number, he looks it up, and he says "oh is it a little plastic part that holds the hinge together?". I say yep. He says they don't sell that part any more. I might do a little more searching on-line. The parent company might no longer sell it,but if if was that much of a problem piece someone else might still carry it. Crap. So now I am looking around the house to see if I can rig something together. Yeah I know a new one is $25-$30, but it seems like such a waste. I think I might run over to lowes and see if they can fix me up.... Dang-it Carrie