Click... Click... Click...

Every once in a while, to promote good heart health, I like to climb up on a ladder and do righteous battle with a ceiling fan. It keeps me young.

This time around it was our living room fan, which is happily way up high on a vaulted ceiling. The fan was clicking so loud that we could hear it over the movie Battleship. Think what you will of the movie itself, but there's no way we should have been able to hear a ceiling fan clicking over all that noise.

We hit the internet. That mighty repository of all knowledge and lore told me that I should identify which fan blades were out of whack and tape pennies to them. So up the ladder I go.

It's a tall ladder and I'm a tiny, terrified nerd. Still, I had a mission. I picked a couple of fan blades more or less at random and taped 6 whole cents worth of my life savings to them.



And the clicking STOPPED. Holy buckets!

I did a little happy dance and then went back up the ladder. No way I'm gonna leave pennies lightly taped to those blades. Can't you just imagine my ceiling fan launching off a whirling copper rain of destruction? I'd blog it, but I'd be unhappy about it.

So I taped the pennies down nice and firm. Still no clicking. I put the ladder away, and ... wait for it ... the fan started clicking again. Of course it did.

Off to the store we went. I bought a ceiling fan balancing kit. Then, the ladder came back out. Up I go. I took down the pennies, then turned on the fan... no clicking.

The balancing kit was unopened. The fan was whisper-quiet. I looked at my wife. "I've found the solution," I told her. "The ladder fixes it. We can't put the ladder away."

"I don't think that's ideal," she replied. "It's no problem," I said. "I'll put some 2x4's across the lower rungs so it'll double as a coffee table."

She made me put the ladder away. Thankfully, there's still no clicking.

Anybody need a ceiling fan balancing kit?