Freezing My Chukkas Off

We had dinner last night with a friend from Oregon.  He observed how quickly the weather turns here.  On another trip to town he said he was driving around with his windows down when he got a call from the airlines about moving up his flight home - an ice storm was expected.  Sure enough, the next day he was on the last flight out of town.  We were iced in and many people lost power.

Yep.  Last week we were skipping along with temps in the 80's and upper 70's.  On Thursday a cold front blasted into town and now freeze warnings are being issued.

Of course we aren't ready to turn on the furnace quite yet.  Just close the windows and pull out some more blankets.  Put some socks on for Heaven's sake!

My son is convinced this is a rare form of child abuse.  All the while he keeps the fan running in his room.

The furnace will be stoked soon enough, but in the meantime we cling to the tender hope that an Indian Summer will surge before Halloween.

We can hope, right?

Dead Refrigerator Woes

I grabbed an ice cream bar from the freezer and noticed a weird fizzing sound coming from the back.  I bent over to see the very bottom shelf (it's a side by side refrigerator) and noticed a redish light.  Like something was trying to spark.  And water was dripping.  From the back.  By the sparking light.  As if the only thing preventing an actual fire was the dripping water!!!!

Being a technology goddess, I knew this wasn't a good thing.

Fortunately we had bought a new refrigerator for the backroom a few years ago.  And let me tell you, having that second fridge has been great for overflow storage especially when I've volunteered to bring a couple of dishes to family gatherings.  This time, however, it was getting every single morsel of food from the main refrigerator.

And I am grateful.

But geez, what a pain in the ass.  This morning I had to pour my bowl of cereal, grab an empty glass and schlep all the way through the house to the backroom to get milk and juice.  So inconvenient.  I have no idea how long we will be down.  This means we have unload all of the crap on top of the kitchen refrigerator and then pull it out and then scrape the gross crusty crap off the floor before we'll let anyone in to assess the problem.  Of course my druthers are that we just replace the beast.