spirogeography

Our friend Tom of Dree's Electric has come to visit us twice this week. He will be back again tomorrow. All of these visits have been in response to the fact that our ice cream is never very hard. It is always kind of soft and soupy, and as Bill Forbes would say, ice cream *must* be kept very cold. Otherwise, it's just not worth eating.

Our concern led us to use the outdoor component of our weather station (affectionately named "Sven") to track the temperature in our freezer. The temperature has varied from zero to twenty-something degrees. Rhonda, the reliable researcher extraordinaire found out the zero is the prime freezer temperature.

"Sven"

Always a thorough sleuth, R then called the good folks at Drees who sold us the refrigerator back in August. In turn, we were sent Tom. Tom is a nice, nice man. He has been here several times before, and we appreciate not only his kindness but also his eagerness -- even joy - at explaining things in great detail.

In order to gain the needed information about our freezer, Tom installed this lovely little creature in our kitchen.

She is approximately ten by six inches and sits cozily between the fridge and the toaster. She records the changes in temperature in graph form. The graphs look like this:

Tom came yesterday to install the device (let's name her Ella, shall we?) and he came back today to check in on her progress. What Ella seemed to be telling Tom is that the freezer is confused. Unbeknown to most of us, freezers are designed in such a way that if the air around them (meaning in our house) is cold enough, the refrigerator thinks it doesn't have to work so much. So, basically, Tom thinks that we keep our house too cold for the freezer to function correctly! Does anyone else see the irony here?

Tom will return tomorrow to check on Ella again. In the meantime we have turned the heat up to a whopping 65 degrees to see if that impacts Ella's readings. If it does, we might have to buy a special device, made only by Frigidaire, that trains the freezer to overcome its confusion.

I have come to love Ella. She is so smart, and, at times, dramatic. I check on her regularly and appreciate the circular graphicness. She is lovely and good at what she does.

Tom is also good at what he does. And he is thorough. He will come back again tomorrow, analyze the data, make a recommendation. And it will have been of no expense to us. This makes Tom also lovely. In a different kind of way.

Overheard in our house earlier today...

"So, you know how I broke the salad spinner when I let Buddy lick the pancake batter out of it and he ran away with it and tried to eat it?"

"Yeah."

"So, well, I really hate not having a salad spinner. It makes washing lettuce so difficult. So I tried something new."

"AMY! What did you do?"

"Well, um, I put the washed salad in a paper bag, stapled it shut, and then put it in the dryer on 'no heat.' "

[incredulous look] "You are crazy."

[pause]

"So, how'd it work?"

"Well, the good news is that the lettuce is dry. But I guess that damp paper bags don't do well on tumble dry, so the lettuce is kind of all over the inside of the dryer."

Six Years

Today we are celebrating our anniversary. Two days early. But it is my year to cook, and I figured that preparing a big meal after teaching until 4pm was not a likely option. And tomorrow night there is an Eagles game, so Rhonda would be unavailable to eat...

So we broke with tradition -- usually a surprise dinner cooked alternately by one of us -- and instead had anniversary brunch. I started with from-scratch cinnamon rolls. Then we took a walk in the woods with buddy. It was a particularly eventful walk as we scared a brood of turkeys who were hanging out in a clearing, and then we watched deer cutting across the path ahead of us. We sat for a while, listening to the trees rustle and taking note of how beautiful it is here.

Then, the real food began. I made (for the first time, mind you) a PA Dutch/Southern staple: chicken and gravy on waffles!! Rhonda was surprised, amused at my selection, and we were both amazed at how delicious it all was. I also made a side of applesauce made from apples picked by the Kallgren children yesterday (thank you!) and we ate outside in the sun. We plopped a table in the middle of the back field/garden area and enjoyed the wonderful strangeness of realizing that in the last of our six years together we changed almost everything. To find ourselves sitting in our garden in Northern Wisconsin is both disorienting and delightful. I know we are both glad to be on this adventure together.

Consumed

It goes without saying that we have had to buy a lot of things over the last weeks. Most of this was expected -- we knew there was not going to be a fridge in the house, for instance. We also knew enough to expect the unexpected. This includes paying for bat professionals (we are still a week out on the waiting list, still sleeping in the living room...) and buying a brand new washing machine as the one here went kaput.

If you are like Rhonda -- the fiscally wise and responsible member of this household -- these are things that are worrying. And yet, they are also things that the fiscally responsible person plans for. So the worry is not that there is no money, but rather a worry about how it might effect the overall budget for the fiscal year as articulated by aforementioned wise planner.

If you are like Amy -- the all-American spender of the household-- then occasions like this can be expressed as follows: "wheee! we get to spend money on nifty big appliances. What fun! Let's celebrate by adding to my vintage pyrex collection."

The following two items were purchased within 30 minutes of one another. Can you distinguish necessity from frivolity? Aren't they pretty?

In the kitchen

Finally! We are done with the kitchen. There are plenty of things that are still imperfect, but the simple act of stripping wallpaper and painting a warm, bright color has made all of the difference in how we feel about this space. FYI, the color is called "squish-squash." Ha.

Before:

After (ignoring the glare):