Wednesday, July 29, 2009

I need more power

No, not in the level of my influence. I'm pretty happy with how much influence I have in my home life. (Well, except for when Lynda takes over the story that I am in the middle of telling . . . but that's just 14+ years of marriage. You win some, you loose a lot more.) And I'm pretty content with the amount of influence I have at work. (Well, I'm sure there are design meetings that I'll be in on later in this project when I'll wish someone would pay attention to me, but I'll probably just be wondering what all the kerfuffle is about.)

So, generally, I'm content with my personal power levels. What I need, however, is more electric power. If you've been keeping up here on WWYG?! you already know that my laptop battery power is suspect. So suspect that it destroyed my ability to give Dazed and Confused and The King of Kong the proper DTM movie review that they so richly deserve. (I may never muster the energy--or power as it were--to go back to that place and rethink it all.)

But in addition to my computer's lack of powerful portability, I discovered today that the basement refrigerator wasn't working properly. How did I know this? Well, the large amounts of water droplets forming on the ceiling of the main refrigerated area (which is the floor of what--normally--is the frozen area) was a major tip off. But, that might have just been a result of the fact that the refrigerator unit is pretty old (we inherited it with the house), so you never know . . . or at least I never do--at first.

But there were other signs. First the other items in the unit (top or bottom) didn't feel very chilled. And the frozen pizza's cardboard box didn't have the satisfying rigidity that one expects. Then, Lynda found (this morning) that the box was absolutely no longer rigid as the pizza encased in the plastic sleeve had thawed, expelled some sort of mysterious factory gas and swollen up, ballooning the box. A clear sign that something was amiss.

But we had to go to work. So, when I got home, I checked in the basement and sure enough, there was the distinct smell of chicken breast in a definite state of unfrozeness. So, the effort to throw stuff out commenced. Luckily, we didn't have lots to throw away. (Thanks recession!) The hot dog buns and bratwurst buns we had bought for this weekend's cookout were okay, but the brats and the hot dogs were goners. As was the aforementioned chicken and pizza, plus some other stuff in the freezer that was either thawed or had been sitting in the expressed chicken juices. (NOT good eats!)

But the random beer bottles were saved and relocated to the main refrigerator upstairs.

After I tossed stuff, I went back down and tested a theory. I unplugged the refrigerator from the outlet it was plugged into and tried an outlet on a power strip connected to a different plug in the basement. Sure enough, the refrigerator fans started whirring. The unit itself works well enough, it was the outlet that is faulty. I don't know why, but I think I'd better put a sign on the spot telling me not to use this one in the future. I then sopped up all the dirty water and scrubbed down all the affected surfaces with soapy water. And then I wiped everything dry with more paper towels. Later tonight, I went and bought some air fresheners to combat the lingering smell of things gone wrong and reality run amok.

It will all be a distant memory by the weekend. So, perhaps I do have power? The power to forget.

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