Money down the drain. (Or what a glass hole).

Garbage disposals are great for grinding up leftover food off dirty dishes, eggshells, broccoli the kids don't eat, orange peels, things like that.

Glass? Not so much.

Two nights ago, while hand-washing a large, expensive, Pyrex glass storage dish in soapy water, my wife lost her grip on it and it shattered into a bazillion pieces in the sink.

I was in the next room when I heard it shatter, and immediately went running into the kitchen screaming the one question any concerned husband would ask, "Did the dog get hurt?"

Unfortunately, it broke over the side of the sink with the disposal, and a ton of glass went in.

I know what you're thinking: hand-washing? Downright primitive, right? What's next? Pounding laundry on rocks? You're preaching to the choir.

Next thing you know we'll get rid of our microwave and start cooking hot dogs in a toaster oven.

Oh, wait, we did that. Crap, I thought I dreamt it.

Anyway, after I cleaned all the shards of glass out of the sink, I decided reaching into a disposal full of broken glass to get the pieces out might not be the best idea. I also thought grinding it up and washing the glass down the drain probably wasn't much better.

But with Plan B I got to keep my fingers. So I turned on the disposal.

Besides Gilbert Gottfried and Fergie there aren't a lot of things that sound like glass being ground up by a garbage disposal. It jammed up almost instantly, and I knew we'd have to get a new one.

So today, Raphael the plumber was here to install the new Insinkerator. I would've done it myself, but as I've said before the only tool I know how to use is the Yellow Pages.

Raphael has been here before. When the faucet on our bathtub sounded like we were going to need a crucifix and Father Karras to fix it, Raphael did his magic - not with an entire new pipe and stem like we thought, but with a 99 cent washer.

An honest plumber. A man of integrity. There's a lot of love for Raphael in our house.

Our new glass-free Insinkerator is awesome. More compact than its predecessor, we now have room to lose old sponges and store more almost-empty cans of Comet under the sink. It's also considerably quieter, and not just because it's not grinding glass.

So, what can we take away from all this?

Don't hand wash the dishes. Nothing good comes from it. Ever.

There are honest plumbers in the world. Well, at least one.

And finally, don't ever trade in the microwave on a toaster oven. Making hot dogs is okay, but you won't have popcorn nearly as often as you used to.