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.