Ting CLINK Ting CLINK!

My husband is hot...no, I mean SWEATY.   All the time.  If he thinks about hot, he sweats.  When I first met him  he had several fans in his bedroom and I don't mean the kind with pom poms or that want autographs.  I'm talking oscillating, humming, fans on poles.  It was like the fan display aisle at Wal-Mart. 

So when we moved into this house he was MORTIFIED to learn there wasn't a ceiling fan in the bedroom.  We had one put up and for the last several years it's been just fine.  Always on HIGH, but just fine.  Every once in a while when the build up of dust on the blades gets to critical mass, I make him clean it off.  He's always turning it on, I'm always turning it off.  It's just a little fan dance we do.....(AHAHAHAHAHA....okay that wasn't that funny...)

Anyway. Recently, something happened to the fan.  In the middle of the night it started to go tink-tink-tink-tink.  The little pully chain that can be used to switch speeds or turn the lights on or off suddenly  started hitting the light fixture.  TINK TINK TINK TINK.  That will PISS YOU OFF in the middle of the night.  Okay...a little aside here...I'm one of those people who can't stand repeated noises.  If it's a rhythmic repeated noise I don't find it soothing, I want to smash it with a ROCK.  So TINK TINK TINK at two am am am pisses me off off off.  What did I do?  I woke up Joe and made him stand up and fix it.

I'm not sure what he did, but it seemed to work until the middle of the night just the night before last when it started to ting CLINK ting CLINK in the night.  DAMN pully chain thing!  Only louder and with a new CLINK added just for rhythmic fun.  It was like sleeping with the percussion section from the Miami Sound Machine in the room.  I woke up Joe to make him FIX IT (I'm not going to stand up and fix it for Pete's sake...that fan will whack my hand off in the dark).  And this time...no fixy.  It just wouldn't stop!  It was maddening.  I finally made him turn the fan off and then he laid there and griped because he thought the bedroom instantly became a sweat lodge.

My question is this.  What makes a fan go bad?  We had no earthquakes, house shifts or otherwise fan unbalancing events!  All of a sudden it's got more sway than a hula girl convention.  What the hell is that?  I even thought about taking off the pully chain things (source of the damned clinking) but then Joe will somehow get it on HIGH and I won't be able to turn it down and it will be like a wind tunnel in there.  And you know what's as bad as ting CLINK?  FREEZING TO DEATH.

I have to kind of laugh because he actually gets up to fix it when I wake him up.  Either I've got him really well trained or he knows that if I had to get up to fix it, the thing would get yanked out of the ceiling and tossed through the window like a propeller.

I'm not friendly in the middle of the night.