I did however make one brief excursion today to visit the folks RepairClinic.com for a pressure switch for the dishwasher. Unfortunately this crapped out yesterday during one of the few days a year that they are closed. I turned on the dishwasher to do a load before Jules started on Thanksgiving dinner only find that the drain pump was running but it never filled with water. 

After some googling I traced the problem to either the float switch or pressure switch. After opening up the side of the dishwasher and checking the electrical switches I found them fine and it was actually a float within the switch that was contaminated and stuck. One $32 part and about 20 minutes of labor later, the dishwasher was running through  a cycle.

Had I not been the type of person that prefers to fix things myself whenever possible, this would easily have been a $200-250 service call. 

Now if only this had occurred 24 hours later or sooner, Max and I could have avoided half a dozen sinkloads full of handwashing yesterday. ?