Yay! I Can Buy a New Hair Dryer!

My hair dryer started making a noise the other day.  Actually, describing this as a noise is like describing Everest as a bit of a hill.  It was A NOISE.  An epic screech.  A terrible racket that scared poor Abigail half to death.  It was the sound of my hair dryer biting the dust.

In the space of five seconds, I had the following thoughts:

Yay! I can buy a new hair dryer!
Wait!  I'm buying No-Thing New.
But hang on, I'm allowed to buy necessities, and I have to dry my hair!
I supposed I should check the thrift store first.
Will I be able to find a used hair dryer?
Won't they be donated because they're lousy hair dryers?
Yay! I can buy a new hair dryer!

All day at work, I day dreamed about a shiny, new hair dryer.  Maybe a white one.  Oooh, and this time I can get one with a retractable cord.  Where should I go?  Target?  I wonder if Consumer Reports has ratings on hair dryers?  (No, not for a long time.)  That afternoon, I headed for Target.

After a quick detour to see the Jason Wu stuff (not even tempting and I swear Kmart had that tee with the lace print last summer), I arrived at the hair dryer display.  Several of them were only around fifteen dollars, so I picked the one in the best least obnoxious color and headed for the registers. 

And then I found I couldn't do it.  I knew I was wimping out on the No-Thing New project.  I stopped, took the dryer back to the shelf, and left the store.

Next stop was the thrift shop where there were plenty of flat irons, but no hair dryers.  I tried a different thrift: One dinky dryer for $5.  But that gave me an idea: I could use the travel dryer I bought in Ireland!  I have an adaptor plug for it, so why not?

Arrive home and go hunting for the Irish dryer.  Realize I left it with the cousins in Ireland last time, because it didn't work so well in the States.  Another idea that went nowhere.

And with that, I was just desperate enough to grab the broken hair dryer and a screwdriver and start taking it apart.  Here is a handy dandy tutorial about fixing hair dryers, but mine does not come apart like that.  I managed to pry the handle apart a little, but couldn't get into the guts to see what was happening.  I finally asked Gerry for some help, and he (brilliantly) thought of prying the screen off the back to gain access.  Once that was off, we saw the cause of the noise: a broken fan blade.

With the broken bit removed, the dryer is humming along once again!  It's a little off balance, so it vibrates a little, but it will suffice until I come up with a replacement.  A No-Thing New victory!