Gingerbread Party - 2025 (with oven breakage)
As with previous years, today we had four other kids show up to decorate houses. A good time was had by all, but we did have some drama earlier in the week. While trying to bake shortbread “gingerbread” men people yesterday, Sabriena heard a “pop” from the oven and then noted sometime after that there was no clock on the front of it.
She called me out, saying “I think our oven died!” This sucks, as it’s a chest-height wall-mount oven from the 1980s or 1990s, and will presumably not be cheap or easy to replace. The one silver lining was that at least the thing didn’t pop before all the house parts were done, though she had hoped to be able to send the kids home with something edible.
It turned out that it had popped the RCBO (I think that’s the right nomenclature? They’re a circuit breaker with an integrated safety switch), but resetting it just caused it to pop again when the oven element came on. A quick check on the old googs suggests that sometimes the element can do this, so I popped the element out the back (no trivial feat as it’s an old fan-forced one) and checked it with a multimeter and it’s completely open. It’s not clear to me how a failed-open element blows a breaker, my guess is that it’s actually tripping the RCD, because current is not going into heat and the control board is leaking some of it to ground?
So began the process of calling around trying to find the two things needed to hopefully fix the problem: a replacement element, and someone competent to install it. Bunnings really only carries replacement elements for the “landlord special” style ovens - the bubble-H-shaped element in the bottom of integrated ranges. But Middendorps could get them… on Monday. And they’re $110. Ouch.
Anyway, nothing for it but to continue, so we set everything up and about 11am the kids started showing up. We decorated houses, and I’m not sure if there was less masturbation jokes or if we’re just desensitized to them now. We collected pizza for lunch, and everyone watched a movie while we ate.
After that, they decided to play some video games. The traditional is Super Smash Bros, but alas Nintendo’s controller longevity has really gone to hell and several of our joycons have developed a small amount of drift, and I was woefully unprepared and did not charge the controllers up.
I did however have the PS4 controllers charged up, so we switched to the Steam Link, paired all the controllers up and they decided to play Guilty Gear instead… which was unfortunate because Duncan was previously playing that on Gamepass, which we cancelled… so we bought it on Steam and off they went for a bit. Alas, it appears to lack a four player option, and we don’t have six controllers for the 3v3 option, so they went looking for something else.
Looking on my Steam library (which is shared through family share) I remembered Duck Game, which they played for ages and is really really great as a couch party game. Like holy shit that game is so good. They then cycled through other games in our library such as Mighty Fight Federation, Gang Beasts, and some others that escape me.
It was about 8pm when everyone finally went home. We’re exhausted, the dog’s exhausted, and we still don’t have an oven.
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