Victory: Success in Fixing my Vacuum!

Let's be honest, I'm not super-handy.  I can follow directions like a champ, but I don't have a lot of confidence in my abilities to, you know, actually fix stuff.  Not in a real, permanent way.  For anything even remotely complicated, I mostly end up having to ask my dad for help, paying someone to fix it, or replacing whatever the broken thing is.

There is one major exception to this rule of thumb, however:  my vacuum.  I've managed to fix it multiple times, mostly using my own know-how, manuals I've found on the internet, and--in two separate instances--a replacement part that I bought on Amazon.com for less than $5.

Needless to say, every time I repair my vacuum I feel like a genius or a hero...or something.  It is a tremendous sense of triumph to "win" over the broken thing, to have control over something that is messed up in my life! :)

My most recent triumph was when my vacuum's belt broke.  I was minding my own business, vacuuming my living room, when I just slightly bumped the front into my TV stand.  Unfortunately, it started to make a terrible noise and smelled like something was burning.  (Smells-like-burning is pretty much always a bad sign.)  I turned it off and took it apart at the bottom to find this had happened:

After a bit of research, an order online, and waiting a few days, my replacement part arrived.  I threw it in the vacuum and I was ready to go!  Victory!!