Tag Archives: refrigerator

Hot and Humid and Dry

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Wednesday, August 2

Another sunny day, hot and sticky. The temperature is not all that daunting, but the high humidity clings to the body, fills the lungs, in the most unpleasant way.

My crocheted top is coming along slowly. I am designing it as I go along, and have ripped out a lot of stitches in my experiments. The panels of the back and the front are complete, and now it is time to consider the shoulder straps. To be honest, I am not enjoying this project all that much, as I have no idea what I am doing, and I am not confident the garment will be attractive when it is complete. There is a lot of learning going on with this project.

Our garden is thriving. I should really call it Attila’s garden. Each afternoon when he arrives home from work, he changes out of his work clothes, and heads for his garden. He putters there for an hour or so, weeding, examining, considering. It is a great source of pleasure for him. I remain at arms length when it comes to the garden, mostly because I enjoy looking at it far more than I enjoy working in it. But it is also important that Attila have a time and place to defuse after a long hot day at work; a place where he does not have to deal with people, even me, a place where he can hear himself think, breath slowly, and come back to himself. That is something I could not do while raising children, as the primary (and then only) caretaker I had not one single minute of time to myself, my daughters even waited by the bathroom door when I was using the facilities, it was exhausting. So I know how important that quiet time after a day’s work can be to a person’s peace of mind and well-being.

My day today includes errands. Paying bills is never really fun, but it is a lot more fun when the money to pay them is available! Today the money is available.

Our vehicles are getting old, so they require that we be attentive to their condition. Tank ran into problems and was towed to the garage a few weekends ago. Thankfully that problem was easily and freely resolved. Tank had another maintenance visit to the garage, for a regular oil change and look-over, she received a passing grade.

The garage where I take her has two hoist bays, two mechanics, the owner and his partner. Tank had an appointment, but just the same he asked me if I was staying while Tank was being serviced. We had discussed this on the telephone when I made the appointment, I was staying, he forgot. The garage is a mile or so outside of town, too far to walk on any day, let alone a sunny, hot, and humid day. I chatted with the other customer for a bit, and after a little while he gave up the one seat to me, by the open window. I was pleased, as despite my appointment I was told the wait would be several hours. Settled comfortably in by the open window, book in hand, cold drink by my side, the time passed pleasantly. The owner periodically dropped into the office to chat with me, about life and the universe and anything. He is a very nice man, an honest man, a pleasant man. My wait was much shorter than anticipated, perceived and actual.

Yesterday I received a surprise video call from an old friend! I had to let the call through four or five layers of security to allow it. The funny part was, it was a “pocket call”, so it means she is keeping me close to heart on that little portable device that determined that now was the time. When a machine decides to reach out to you, is it fate, is it karma, or are you a mere 0, or a 1.

Thursday, August 3

Attila watered the garden last night with bath water. The rain barrels are dry. Although the areas to the north of us have received a lot of rain, we have had very little. Attila also reports that the rabbits have nibbled away all the leaves from our second planting of green beans. What beasties! That was a whole month of fresh vegetables we lost to them, I hope they enjoyed their meal. Discussions about a fenced garden are now in progress.

We are planning on taking Iris out for a weekend sometime this summer. Iris is equipped with an ancient refrigerator, a two-way refrigerator that will run on propane, or on electricity. Last night Attila ran an extension cord to Iris so that we could test to see if the refrigerator will run on electricity. It took about an hour, and sure enough, the freezer section was getting very cold. This is impressive. The refrigerator is a 1977 model, making it 40 years old. We will be looking to take Iris out for a weekend at a camp site with electrical service.

In my dreams we travel around Canada, pulling Iris along behind us. This dream isn’t likely to come true, there is not time while Attila works, and there will be no money for such whimsy when he retires without a pension. But still, what would life be without a dream!

The music concert: I don’t think you really feel a part of something that you have to invite yourself to participate in, unless all the participants are there under the same circumstances, together by mutual choice.

Friday, August 4

We awoke this morning to a thunderstorm, with much needed rain. The water barrels have been replenished, the gardens refreshed. The forecast predicts more thunderstorms today, tonight, and tomorrow.

My new eyeglasses from Costco are a thumbs up purchase, so far. They are progressive lenses, where my former glasses were bifocals. I had tried progressive eyeglasses many years ago, and could not adjust to them. With the new eyeglasses my eyes (and balance) adjusted within an hour to the progressive lenses. I like the new frames so far, they are inexpensive plastic, and do not seem to slip down my nose as my last pair liked to do; the lenses are larger and provide me with a greater range of clear vision.

Plastic eyeglasses would be a bad idea while burning brush at Rideau Camp, those fires throw a mighty heat. I will retain my old bifocals, with the titanium frame, for working out of doors, and for emergency backup. My eyes have changed almost imperceptibly in the last five years, and for that I am truly grateful. The optometrist tells me I have the first signs of developing cataracts, but it will be some time before that becomes a problem.

The crocheted top is coming along. As usual I am learning the hard way, about designing the pattern, the shape, the size, the stitches. I will be very glad to get through to the end, and I have my fingers crossed it will be presentable. The idea was to create a mesh top to wear over tank tops in hot weather. I HATE bras, absolutely hate them, and prefer braless living whenever I can get away with it. But too much wrong-sort-of male attention gathers around my nipples when I go braless in public, in a tank top, or other knit tops, so I want a light cover up, to throw on when we are dashing out the door to the store.

We are planning to attend an all-day music event tomorrow. As usual food is a big issue. It is very challenging to come up with ideas for portable food that is low-sodium, low-sugar, low-cholesterol, and allergen free; that can be comfortably carried around all day long. One light meal we have come to rely upon is homemade sodium-free hummus, with low-sodium rice crackers. I love sandwiches, but commercial breads are too high in sodium for me, and my sodium-free homemade bread is too crumbly for sandwiches. Last week a search through several grocery stores yielded a relatively low-sodium English Muffin; 115 mg sodium, no cholesterol and only 2 gm of sugar per muffin. This will make an acceptable sandwich using onions, lettuce, tomato, and a vegetarian cold cut which is low in sodium and in cholesterol.

Because most value-added foods contain unhealthy amounts of sodium, sugar, cholesterol, saturated fats, preserving chemicals, and my allergen, we cannot just walk into a grocery store and purchase canned or packaged foods for camping or travel. I admit to being ill-prepared this summer, in planning foods that are portable and healthy. Last summer we enjoyed grilled cheese sandwiches over the open fire, frequently, but alas the high-sodium bread and cheese has been implicated in the issues I encountered with my blood pressure last summer and autumn. Oh how I wish for a sodium-free sandwich bread!! You would think that the bakeries would respond to the demand, but no.

This afternoon there are tornado warnings in our area, seemingly downgraded to a severe thunderstorm watch now. The closest I have come to a tornado was at our country house, when the wind whipped over the back ridge behind the house, to twist and tear off the top 30 feet of the pine tree in the front yard, leaving a 30 foot high stump. I didn’t see it come down, but I heard it land on my Argosy trailer! My fingers are crossed that we experience no damage here at Mist Cottage, or at our Rideau Camp.

Worldly Distractions

Weather

SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WATCH IN EFFECT
25°C
Date: 1:00 PM EDT Friday 4 August 2017
Condition: Partly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.2 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: 24.9°C
Dew point: 21.3°C
Humidity: 80%
Wind: SSW 14 km/h
Humidex: 34

Quote

“We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.”
Blaise Pascal
1623 – 1662

“At heart, the issues raised in a work of fantasy are those we face in real life. In whatever guise — our own daily nightmares of war, intolerance, inhumanity, or the struggles of an Assistant Pig-Keeper against the Lord of Death — the problems are agonizingly familiar. And an openness to compassion, love, and mercy is as essential to us here and now as it is to any inhabitant of an imaginary kingdom.”
Lloyd Alexander
Newbery award winning author of children’s fantasy literature.

Tonic

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Sometimes a change is as good as a rest. The past weekend was one of those times.

On Thursday night of last week, Attila and I loaded Iris the trailer with our belongings, and hooked her up to Tank the FJ Cruiser. When Attila got home from work on Friday, it took us less than an hour to get out the door, and be on our way to the Rideau Camp. We thought that since it was the Labour Day long weekend, that the roads would be busy. It seems though, that very few people consider the area where our Rideau Camp is located a holiday destination. Perfect! The roads were no busier than they have been all summer.

We arrived at the Rideau Camp relatively early, got Iris set up, a camp fire started, the kitchen tent erected, and dinner on the stove. And then it was dark. We sat for a few hours staring into the flickering flames of the camp fire, then watching the twinkling embers when the fire burned itself out. But the stars, the real pleasure of the evening was the starry heaven above us. There are no towns or villages near our camp, so there is little in the way of artificial light to fade the heavens. Just before we turned in for the night, a shooting star caught my eye. It was an omen, the weekend was to be perfect.

We are still working out a few wrinkles in the camping department. One thing I really miss on the three day camping trip is a refrigerator. A cooler just will not stay cold over the course of three hot days. Next year I am hoping we can come up with a way to power our Koolatron, perhaps a battery with a solar trickle charger. Water is another issue, we bring it in in 4 litre bottles, but we need quite a bit for cooking, washing up, and putting out camp fires. I would like a rain barrel catchment system of some kind, at least for the purposes of putting out camp fires. Another issue is our beds. The old cushions in Iris are not comfortable. Having new cushions made runs into more than $1000, not going to happen. I haven’t found a good place to get replacement foam yet, I am still looking, and haven’t yet decided what type of foam I want, or how to cover it when I get it. In the meantime, the beds just aren’t comfortable for our old bones. All of these things are minor, it is fun to think about these little non-problems though, trying to come up with solutions.

The composting toilet with the humanure composting system is working out very well so far. No smell, no flies. We have yet to do our first bucket dump though, so it isn’t fully tested yet.

I had thought that Attila would use this long weekend to tackle the huge pile of cedar logs, stacking them into neat rows. However, Saturday morning he needed to bring me more brush to burn in the campfire, which led him to tackle one of the large brush piles left by the bulldozer when the driveway was put in. That got him started on clearing brush piles. There are about a dozen of them, piles of dirt and gravel, and stumps, and trees, and branches. The piles make the terrain on the south end of the camp rough and almost impassable. Over the course of three days Attila dug up and removed three brush piles. I burned most of it Saturday, as it was a lovely cool day. A half a dozen large stumps with roots were burned, several trees, and dozens and dozens of branches. Sunday was a much warmer day, and I found it just too hot to be anywhere near a campfire. Attila took over feeding the fire, and I kept watch over it when he headed back to his brush piles to bring back more wood. We spent a second evening watching our fire, but letting it burn out as the light of day died, watching only the embers for hours before bedtime. The lovely thing about watching the embers, is that they emit little light, and allow for wonderful star gazing. Again, I spotted a falling star just before we turned in for the night.

This morning we decided to forego a camp fire, partly because it was such a warm day, and partly because we prefer to stay the night after putting out a camp fire, to make sure it is well and truly out by the time we leave the property. Attila finished working on the brush pile at the entry to the property, under the hydro line. The hydro had clear cut the area beneath the lines, and left the trees and brush where they fell, years ago. The pile of brush was several feet thick. Attila dragged out large branches and piled them up, so that I could drag them further into the property and stack them where they would stay dry next spring for burning. When the brush was removed from under the hydro lines, Attila took the weed whacker and demolished the chest high growth of weeds. It looked very nice, but we have a lot of frontage, so it was but a drop in the bucket of the total job. We might get to the rest some other year, then again, maybe not.

As we were sitting down to eat our lunch, a healthy looking fox approached the camp. Attila yelled at him, but he was very bold and kept on coming. I waved a stick at him, but he wasn’t phased by that at all. We realized that he was the culprit who had come into our camp while we were sleeping and overturned our water bottles, which were thankfully sealed. He was probably searching for food. We both rushed at him waving sticks, and he finally retreated. I saw him sitting a few hundred feet off in the bush, then watched him try to climb a tall oak tree to get at whatever was in a hollow in the trunk, but he couldn’t reach it and gave up. Then he came back to the camp. We couldn’t believe it! We chased him again, and he would only retreat a few feet at a time. Finally Attila threw a rock towards him, not hitting him but hitting the ground near him and off he went at a quick trot. I don’t mind wild foxes, but I don’t want them approaching me in my kitchen! We talked to our neighbours later in the day and they told us that the people down the road feed the wild foxes. People! No wonder the fox was approaching us, he has learned to beg.

A wild fox. This enterprising fellow was not ten feet from me, he knew I was there and he didn’t care. He was looking for food, and begging. We are very careful with food around our campsite. It is never left out, and is locked away in the vehicle every night. We eat only at the picnic table, so there are no food droppings around the camp, and our dishwater, which might contain bits of food, is poured onto the campfire at night to put it out, burning the small food particles instantly. This fox has been given no reason to believe there is any food at our campsite. And yet here he is, sniffing around, boldly refusing to leave. We finally chased him away, and found out later that some of the cottagers have been feeding the wild foxes in the area, thinking it great fun.
DSCF9454
The wild fox finally decided to leave, as we became more aggressive in our request that he depart. I imagine he returned as soon as we left, but he wouldn’t find any food. We are hoping he eventually loses interest, after repeated failures to find anything edible at the site. Of course, he can eat as many mice and chipmunks as he can find around our campsite, we would not miss either of those little foragers.
DSCF9455

As the heat of the day set in, we decided to head home. It took a few hours to get everything packed up and ready to go, and by the time we left we were grateful to be sitting in an air conditioned vehicle.

We had turned off the air conditioning at Mist Cottage, and closed all the curtains for the weekend, since we would not be here, and it was lovely and cool in the house when we arrived home.

The weekend acted as a tonic, I feel much better for having sat in the bush by camp fires and star light.

Worldly Distractions

Weather

22°C
Date: 8:00 PM EDT Monday 5 September 2016
Condition: Mainly Clear
Pressure: 102.0 kPa
Tendency: falling
Visibility: 24 km
Temperature: 22.3°C
Dewpoint: 16.7°C
Humidity: 70%
Wind: S 12 km/h
Humidex: 27

Quote

“That’s who you really like. The people you can think out loud in front of.”
John Green

Tufted Titmouse

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Thursday, April 10, 2014

What I thought was a Jay, is in fact a Tufted Titmouse. What funny little birds they are, as they hop about the tree eating berries. They seem to travel in company, and constantly interact. It is such a treat to watch them, soon the leaves will hide almost all the activity of the birds, but for now the bare branches play host to a vaudeville stage of characters.

Tufted Titmouse

Tufted Titmouse: These little birds are enjoying the berries on the tree in our front yard. They share with good grace, with Robins and Grackles.

The wait for the refrigerator delivery made for a day of impatience. I should be above all that, I know, but sadly I am not! The time slot for the delivery was between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., that is a twelve hour window. At 8:00 a.m. I was ready! I had moved furniture, swept away the berries dropped the by the birds onto the front porch, and brought in the weekly paper thrown onto the drive. The hours crept by, and as they did every truck engine heard in the distance was cause for curiosity. It is a silly way to spend time, but there you have it. In some instances I have the patience of a saint, but in others I exhibit no patience whatsoever. I am a woman of contrasts. Quite frankly, if I could find a way to talk myself out of this impatience, I would engage myself in that internal conversation immediately! It isn’t comfortable, and I feel silly being this way. The bright side of this trait is that it prevents me from taking myself too seriously!

As fate would have it, the refrigerator was the last delivery of the day, arriving close to 6:00 p.m. I was not surprised. At one point in the morning I noticed the store clerk had written the wrong area code for our telephone number, and so I received no call to confirm delivery or time. It took three separate telephone calls to sort that out, so that by 4:20 p.m. I received an automated call telling me that the delivery people would be on their way soon.

It only took twenty minutes from start to finish to bring the refrigerator in from the truck and set it up, which included taking the screen door apart, and putting it back together again.

What luxury! All the food kept in the cooler was transferred into the refrigerator. What a relief it is, to have the ordeal of appliance delivery over with.

Now we are back to where we began last autumn; we have hot water and refrigeration. The renovation budget for the summer of 2014 is shot!

During the afternoon Terra dropped by with Wiggler, who is full of energy. Wiggler was at first shy about wandering in our back yard, she has lived her whole life, six shorts months of it, in the country. Every city noise caused her to start, stand at attention and sniff the air. She had a good time though, as she found some sticks to throw around and chew on, and crunched away on the last little bit of snow left in the yard, in a sunless corner.

My haircut has been a surprise. It is very conventional looking, and of course I am not sure I like that. But it seems that a lot of people who work in retail do like it! People are definitely more friendly, significantly more friendly, and more helpful. Same old me, more conservative looking image. Attila thinks it is because people hold back when there is something unique or unusual in someone’s appearance, because they do not know what to expect. Maybe he is right.

Friday, April 11, 2014

I awoke at 5:30 a.m., after a restless night. By 6:20 a.m. I had eaten my breakfast, enjoyed a coffee, packed the car, and secured the house by turning off the power to the hot water heater, turning off the water supply and unplugging everything in house, except the microwave oven and the refrigerator.

I love early morning. The birds were singing up the sun as I walked out to the car, after locking up the house. How lovely the landscape, when the mist blankets the fields, the treetops reaching out into the clear sky above. Alone on the road, it was possible to slow down from time to time to take in the beauty of the surrounding countryside.

I arrived home at 11:10 a.m., the trip passed quickly and without incident. The day was sunny, and mild, the traffic continued light for the entire distance.

Attila came home for lunch, and it was so good to see him! He is moving into the busy season at work, so that he will spend less and less time at home, share fewer and fewer lunch hours in conversation across the table.

The snow is still deep on the ground here, but we can see the gravel on the driveway and deck, where it was routinely removed over the winter. It was very odd to drive back into winter. At the beginning of my journey home there was no snow at all in the landscape, then there were skiffs of snow along the tree lines at the edge of the farmer’s fields, eventually there were fields covered with a thin layer of melting white snow, and then finally there were fields of deep snow and high snow banks lining the roads. We are expecting snow flurries next Tuesday at the country house. Spring is very late this year.

snow is april

The view from the deck at the country house, on 11 April, 2014. The depth of the snow can be ascertained by the cap on the rock, upper left in the photo.

What I noticed most was the relative absence of birds at the country house. No robins yet!

Worldly Distractions

Weather

9°C
Date: 3:00 PM EDT Friday 11 April 2014
Condition: Not observed
Pressure: 101.7 kPa
Temperature: 9.2°C
Dewpoint: -4.7°C
Humidity: 37%

Quote

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.”
Martha Graham
1894 – 1991

Kettles and Coolers

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Part 1

So here it is, December!

I am writing this from the little house in the city. We drove down on Friday night, got here just before midnight. Mist will spend two nights on her own. We turned on the electric heat before we left, so the temperature will not drop to freezing no matter how cold it gets outside. If the power went out, she would still be warm enough, just not cozy, with the heat from the masonry heater. The cost of electric heat for a two night absence will probably be over $50 but hopefully under $100. We will not be doing that very often, or without careful consideration. That is one of the two huge difficulties we face in regard to winter mobility. The other is driving conditions.

Attila turned on the hot water heater, and a few hours later we had a lot of water spreading over the basement floor. Toast. The hot water heater is toast. It is old, really old and it came with the house. We were pleased to have it, although it was a real energy hog from the dark ages. Now we have a beautiful new shower in our bathroom and no hot water. That’s life. We cannot afford a new hot water heater right now, and certainly would never rent one from the companies in Canada. They try to lock you into contracts for life, with stiff fees to get out, no thank you. When we can afford a new hot water heater, we will purchase it outright and Attila will install it. In the meantime, when we need hot water we fill up and plug in the electric kettle.

Earlier this autumn our used refrigerator gave up the ghost. It is still in the kitchen, unplugged, with the doors held ajar with a broomstick. We use it as a storage cupboard. To keep our milk and eggs and cheese and perishables cold we use a cooler. It isn’t so bad. We have a Koolatron and we plug it in while we are visiting the house, and unplug it when we leave. Next summer we will probably resort to a regular cooler and make ice in our basement freezer to keep our perishables fresh.

So it is back to kettles and coolers at the little house in the city. I look at is as a luxurious winter camping experience. You can usually, barring evil, find a comforting perspective for less than perfect circumstances. Life is generally a less than perfect experience, for the majority anyway.

Attila has been working on the wiring. He has removed countless yards of dead electrical wires. He is now removing wiring that was ill conceived, replacing and rerouting it correctly. We have decided that over the winter that is what he will work on, and it is slow going. And the before and after pictures look almost the same!

When we arrived at the little house in the city, there was snow on the ground. We expected to be forced to park on the street, blocked by the snow banked across the end of the driveway by the snow plow. However, one of our neighbours had ploughed our driveway. We do not know who it was, but what a wonderful thing to do! There are very good reasons I prefer the little house in the city to the beautiful country house. All that glitters is not gold.

Because our little house in the city is in such a friendly little neighbourhood, I decided to put up a few Christmas decorations, just to make the house seem friendly too. I spent $3.00 on Christmas balls and a big red ribbon for the front door, all plastic, all made in the third world. It looks cheery from a distance, which is what I wanted it to do.

I felt bad, and so I should, buying these cheap goods made by people who are underpaid and probably not treated all that well either. I couldn’t find any Canadian made baubles to buy. I will handle my $3.00 worth of cheap baubles with care, and reuse them year after year, and send my Christmas goodwill energy to those workers around the world who are making poverty wages. “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride”. And I will watch for opportunities to buy Canadian made goods whenever I can.

Part 2

We left for home about noon today. The day was overcast with intermittent rain. At least rain is what we started out with. As we travelled north the rain became more robust, until it became wet snow. The roads were wet, but there was no ice because the temperature remained above 0C. We arrived home at dusk, and so avoided having to drive after dark through snow, and dropping temperatures.

The country house was cool, 9C when I came up the stairs with the first load of belongings. Mist was sleeping in my chair. While she was still sleeping I began to build a fire in the masonry heater. She did not waken until the flames were well under way. Since she is stone deaf, I could make a racket setting the fire and not disturb her sleep. However, the bit of heat that began to emanate from the heater caused her to wake suddenly. She thought about berating me for our absence, and the lack of heat, but just as she got started she was distracted by the flickering fire, and sat before the heater staring, or should I say worshipping, the flames.

The first firing of the masonry heater brought the temperature up to 14C, which is not quite warm enough, Mist and I agree. Attila chopped more wood, and has started a fire in the little wood stove downstairs, to supplement the heat until the masonry heater is fully charged again.

This was the first visit this autumn, to the little house in the city, that we have had to concern ourselves with heating while we are away. What a pain the patootie! Mist agrees.

Tonight it is “warm” outside, hovering above freezing. I can tell because the accumulated snow on the roof is sliding down, falling, and landing with great whoooomfs on the deck!

According to the weather people, we will have freezing drizzle tomorrow. Lucky us, to have missed travelling in freezing drizzle!

Worldly Distractions

Weather

0°C
Date: 7:23 PM EST Sunday 1 December 2013
Condition: Light Rain
Pressure: 101.6 kPa
Visibility: 2 km
Temperature: 0.3°C
Dewpoint: 0.2°C
Humidity: 99%
Wind: calm

Quote

“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”
Dorothy Parker
1893 – 1967

New Refrigerator

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There are times when you know an event is coming, and you decide to put off doing anything about it until it actually happens. It might happen today, it could happen years from today.

For us, it happened today. Our 17 year old refrigerator has sounded louder and louder as the years have gone by. Today it stopped making that awful racket, but it also stopped working, completely.

The first thing I did this morning was shop for a refrigerator. I went online and found several acceptable models that I could order, and we would have them within a week. Then I called the only local appliance store and asked them what they had in stock, and they had a Frigidaire, a comparative model at a competitive price, which was around $700.00. This is a relatively low priced model, although there were much cheaper ones available, which reviewers pointed out were extremely loud. We live in an open plan, a loud refrigerator is very intrusive, so those less expensive models would have been difficult to live with. They couldn’t deliver till Monday. That would be a long wait without a refrigerator. So I called Attila, who talked to his boss, who lent us the truck, that picked up the local new refrigerator, and delivered the refrigerator to our house before 3:00 p.m. today. And took the old fridge out to the yard! Whew!

So, the new refrigerator is sitting on the deck, waiting for Attila to come home and bring it into the house, level it and plug it in. Then I will go to work getting all our food into it.

My day was spent emptying and cleaning the old refrigerator. I filled the Koolatron, with the most perishable items, like milk, and turned it on. My first attempt set the Koolatron to heat, but luckily I remembered to look at the manual and corrected that within minutes. Then I filled two coolers with the contents of the freezer, and filled three boxes with the rest of our food. Then the old refrigerator was cleaned and ready to go out the door.

We had been saving vegetable scraps in the freezer, to make broth. Those scraps went into a pot, were covered with water, and set to simmer on the stove. Also saved were organic orange peels, which went into another pot, and set to simmer on the stove. A few items in the refrigerator were beyond saving, so out they went to the garbage can.

There are worse ways to spend a day, as I found out earlier this week with the preparation for the colonoscopy! So there are no complaints here!

Just to note, the refrigerator I REALLY wanted, but did not need, and could not afford, was a Leibherr CS 1400, which rings in it at about $3600.00. Many happy owners report that they are very, very quiet, which is what I consider most appealing about it. I can dream.

Here it is, just after midnight and I finally got the last of the frozen food into the new freezer! Tired and happy, I think it is time to turn in for the night.

Worldly Distractions

Weather

14°C
Date: 11:00 PM EDT Thursday 8 August 2013
Condition: Mainly Clear
Pressure: 101.5 kPa
Visibility: 11 km
Temperature: 14.4°C
Dewpoint: 13.8°C
Humidity: 96%
Wind: WNW 5 km/h

Quote

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.”
Helen Keller
1880 – 1968