My Fan Base

When we last left Alan on Photo Friday, I was posing for a nice photo of me trying to wire up a new ceiling fan in the rental unit. The instructions to the damn thing were wrong, identifying what was a white wire with a red label as a white wire with a white label. Instead of figuring out what the hell the instructions were actually telling me, I returned to our apartment and posted the nice photo of myself. I figured that if I took a break and returned to the job after a while, the instructions might make more sense. About an hour later I was back at it. I climbed up the ladder and continued to fiddle with the connections when suddenly the wires disappeared from my hands. The fan was falling.

It's funny how accidents can seem to take such a long time to unfold, yet in reality they only take a second. As slowly as it moved in my mind, my hands couldn't come close to catching up with the fan that was now plummeting towards the floor. It crashed with a loud clang, and bounced across the room.
Shit I thought, How bad could it be? I climbed down off the ladder, and picked up what was left of the fan that Mark had purchased.

As I walked into the bedroom of our apartment Mark asked, "How bad is it?"
Apparently the loud crash of the fan hitting the floor, and the sound of my cursing had alerted Mark that there was trouble. I looked around the room and both dogs were cowering in the corner.
"It's bad."
It was bad, really bad. The flying saucer shaped motor had been flattened on one side. A small dent decorated the other side, and the part that the fan blades attached to was seriously bent.
"That's it! I'm through.... hack, hack.....  I'll never again.... wheeze..."
As Mark tried to choke out his rage, I made a quick exit back to the other apartment.

After four hours of bending, twisting, and pounding with a hammer, I managed to get the fan nearly back to the shape it was when it was removed from the box. It isn't quite symmetrical, and one of the fan blades comes precariously close to rubbing against the housing, but it works. Mark came over, took a look at it, and gave it his blessing. Luckily for me he only looked at it from the good side.