It's a Bouncing Baby Fridge!

I moved into my condo in 1982, and my vanilla top-freezer fridge was there at the time. Over the years it's been very little trouble. The icemaker broke a couple of times; the second time I decided to live without it, and have muddled along fairly well. Thursday, it gasped its last. With 60lbs of frozen lamb in it (currently vacationing in my neighbor's freezer, bless her). I didn't realize, at the time, that the fridge portion had joined the suicide pact until it was too late to save most of the food in it. I saved the margaritas - there's enough alcohol in the bottle that it wouldn't dare spoil!

I thank $deity that I had just paid off my Sears card, so that I was able to take advantage of the current sale (pay it off by Nov 2008 and no interest).

Friday I measured the old fridge (and the opening) and went to sears.com to shop. I spent a couple of hours comparing features and prices and reading customer reviews, and made my selection - a White Kenmore 21.8 cu. ft. Side-By-Side Refrigerator with PuR® Ultimate II Water Filtration. I've always wanted a side-by-side with ice and water in the door. I placed my order, and selected delivery on Monday, confident that Sears would never let me down.

Monday... I never got a confirmation email, or a delivery appointment call, so I phoned Sears customer support. Not that they make that easy... after half an hour on hold, my first "helper" spoke English very poorly (and quietly), with a thick Hindustani accent, and told me "there is glitch in computer - order not processed". Her supervisor confirmed that there was nothing they could do to dislodge my order, and that she would cancel it. And then the phone disconnected.

Again I called, getting someone else, this time with more understandable speech. She offered to place another order... but the deal would be a little different. Instead of $150 off, there would be a rebate form, but in the end there'd be $250 off. And they'd comp my $75 delivery fee. Okay, okay... she placed the order, placed me on hold, and, yes, again I was disconnected. Terrible phone service they have at Sears customer support.

Two and a half hours on the phone, and I had a maybe-order. When it didn't show up online, I called them yet again. It would be, they informed me (I'm not even going to discover the number of transfers and retelling of my story this took) that it would be a minimum of 42 hours before they could even begin to schedule delivery.

Frustrated and desperate, I said: "What if I just cancel the online order and go into the store - do you think I could get a fridge sooner than two more days?". $deity was with me, for the perky phone person agreed that could be done, and even connected me with my local Sears. In 10 minutes I had placed my order with a friendly (commission paid) salesman Jimmy, with a promise that I'd have a call to schedule delivery the same day.

The machine called last night, and there is now a nice white fridge humming away in my kitchen.

It'll be a little longer before I have ice and water in the door, though. I have to get a plumber in to do that, so it'll have to wait till I can save up $100 or so to get the water hooked up. The plastic tube that the old fridge used (fed up from the basement) is, not unlike everything else in this place, not up to code. (The prior owner was a contractor and did things in his own idiosyncratic way.)

I don't care. I've been without an icemaker for 5 years; a few weeks or even months won't make a difference. I can refrigerate food and beverage again, and fetch my lamb back from my neighbor. Wheee!

Move Over Bob Vila

Now I know a little more about my ancient (20 yr old) furnace than I did. The pilot mechanism was dirty -- $100 and the repairman (my hero) cleaning it later, I have heat. Wahoo! I tend to keep the place on the cold side in the winter (mid-sixties... one year, all of my friends gave me lap blankets -- a hint, I think) but when it got down into the fifties even I noticed. That was, alas, the grocery money for this paycheck. Good thing I have some food in the freezer, 'cause it's gonna be a tight couple of weeks. I just can't seem to catch a break these days. But at least I'll be warm!

Not So Handy

*sigh* Okay, not so handy. After about 24 hours of operation, it's gone bye-bye again, and I fear how much it might cost me to get it fixed. Furnace repairman on his way, to the tune of $75 minimum. Poverty sucks... Life, however, goes on.

Baby It's Cold Outside

If there's one thing we do well in Michigan, it's weather. Cold weather, lots of snow this week, even though it's March and ought to be considering spring as an option. Maybe next month. Or Friday... it got below zero last night, and they're predicting rain & 40's for Friday. There are only two fields where you can be wrong 60% of the time and be considered a success -- economics and weather prediction.


In any event, I'm feeling quite the handy homeowner. All week the temperature in the house has been slowly sinking -- set at 80, the temperature has been hovering around 60. While it makes the cats much more friendly (body heat is a great attractor), it's not good for us or the pipes. So... thinking that it was probably that I've never cleaned the filter in the electrostatic air filter I went down and banged around in the utility room for a while. I moved some stuff, tried to get the back off the furnace where the traditional filter used to be, turned the electrostatic filter off and back on... and lo and behold, I have heat! Woohoo!


Of course, since I have no idea how I did it (or what I did), I'd probably better call the heating people...