jimsjournal
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I bought a new refrigerator... almost want to add an exclamation mark to that, to shout with joy... A new refrigerator!
When we bought our first house, back in 1980, we needed a refrigerator and bought a new one... when we moved out late in 1995, that refrigerator was still there, still functioning. It showed wear and tear -- two of the door shelves had lost their rail and thus were useless -- but the refrigerator still ran fine, kept foods cold. However, because it was a fifteen-year-old machine, we did not bring it on our move.
The new house we bought had a refrigerator, one that looked fine when we moved in, but I have struggled for five and a half years with that refrigerator until I have come to hate it. A bit of explanation... we bought our house from the builder... the owner and her husband had their own company, building houses to order and also on speculation... this house was being built on spec when she and her husband dissolved their business and their marriage... so she lived in it for several months before we came and bought it from her.... The house is well-built, but she skimped on some of the last details, some cheap light fixtures, only running phone and cable to two rooms, etc. One of those penny-pinching items was the refrigerator, which turns out to have been a showroom display model, a very inexpensive model... After putting up with an old refrigerator with two useless door shelves, I was a bit annoyed when within a few months we lost the use of one of our door shelves the same way... but the worst thing of all was its inability to maintain proper temperature... food in the freezer compartment becomes squishy at the same time that produce in the refrigerator freezes. And humidity has become more and more of a problem... until a week or so ago I could not stand it any longer and announced that that machine had to go
My new refrigerator is a 23.7 cubic foot Maytag, top freezer, deep bins for door shelves, no flimsy plastic railings, adjustable shelves, lots of space. I think I'm more excited about my new refrigerator than I was the last time I bought a new car. Well, I use them both every day...
And yes, I can remember when people called them ice boxes (or, in my neighborhood, ice-a box)... In fact, when I was a kid one of my neighbors, just two houses up the street, was an iceman... yeah, he delivered blocks of ice to people who still used ice boxes (instead of refrigerators, I'm talking late 1940's here)... and in the summer, when he would stop home for lunch and park his truck in front of his house, we kids would scramble up onto the back of his truck where canvas tarps covered big blocks of ice and we'd grab big slivers of ice left behind from cutting the blocks (like 100 pound blocks of ice and some body only wanted 50 pounds, etc.) and he'd come out on his porch and yell "Hey you damma kids get offa my truck!" and we would run with our pilfered pieces of ice, so cold and wet and refreshing on a hot summer day and I swear they tasted better than the popsicles the ice cream man sold.
Late Sunday afternoon Nancy and I got in a good aerobics workout with The Firm, an exercise video with an emphasis on using hand-weights, a really vigorous workout rather than a dance session. (I can't stand workout tapes that are all choreography.) After the tape I went out for a three and a half mile run, felt pretty good.
I am a regular blood donor and while I was out over the weekend I received a phone message from the Blood Bank asking me to donate. I had planned on calling them Monday and making an appointment for Saturday but when I got to work that morning I found a blood drive going on in my building, so I went downstairs and donated at work. I have rather difficult veins, they tend to roll and shift and sometimes present a lot of difficulty to the person trying to insert a needle. This was one of those times... finally the two nurses gave up on my left arm and I offered my right arm... and that worked perfectly, slipped the needle right in and got a really good flow... but, of course, I ended up with both arms bandaged and I said I would tell everyone I gave twice. (This isn't the first time this has happened and I've used that same line... I've lost track of the exact total over the years, but I think I passed the five gallon mark sometime last year... I used to average about three times a year but a couple of years ago I was ineligible to donate for a year because of some periodontal work so I tried to make up for that last year and gave five times and that worked out okay, so this year I'm going to try for six times.) A woman in my department also went down to give blood today, got a rookie who had just started last week... and she ended up with bandages on both of her arms... so we went around bugging people to go down and donate, telling them that we were giving double so they could at least give once... *grin* You're not supposed to engage in strenuous activity the rest of the day after giving blood, so I figured this would make a good rest day in my workout scheme, but after dinner Nancy and I went our for a walk, covered a bit over two miles, so I did get some exercise in...
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