Archive for October, 2007

A Tale of Two Freezers

Wednesday, October 31st, 2007

About four years ago RR and I were discussing buying in bulk so I could cut down my trips to the grocery store. I liked the idea but at the time I had only my kitchen fridge and his ‘beer’ fridge to hold frozen items. Some people would think this is a lot of space but for two ice cream addicts like ourselves, we needed a dedicated freezer for the ‘real’ food.

We priced out freezers and decided that we couldn’t afford to purchase one at that time. I was disappointed, I had visions of super sized bags of frozen broccoli and biscuits dancing through my head which were now pointing and laughing at me and my hopes.

But lo I had forgotten about the wonder of the Trading Post (a radio show every Saturday morning on our local AM station where people can call in to unload their crap). RR called me one Saturday morning and told me that we had a freezer! Yay! It was old but it still worked - and it had only held ice for the package store down the street from us (so I wasn’t inheriting someone else’s mess).

I was happy until I got the electric bill. 30 years ago they did not have Energy Star ratings. I learned this the hard way when my electric bill went up $40+ a month. Of course, this all happened about the same time that I was home more so I attributed it to me sucking up all that extra energy by using the TV and the heat/ac more than when I was working out of the home 8 hours a day.

I eventually came to realize that it was, in fact, not my fault that we were going into major debt with the electric bill and so began my campaign to rid ourselves of ‘the beast’.

Yes, the broccoli was laughing at me again, in case you are wondering.

Eventually I managed to clean the thing out and unplugged it. When did this happen? October 8, 2007, to be exact. How do I know this? I wrote it on the calendar. Yes, I am that anxious to prove my point.

However, I do not want to give up my freezer space so when I began ‘the beast’ campaign, I also began my ‘energy star is good’ campaign and started looking at new freezers (again). RR was insisting that I was going to have the old freezer or nothing. I was insisting that we needed the space or I was going to start driving to Albany once a week again which is WAY more gas than either of us want to burn. Since he is the one that would be doing the actual moving into the house, he wins. I just don’t have the muscle to win that argument.

What I didn’t do was take into account the FD steak dinner. Silly me, I could have saved myself so many hours of nagging!

You see, every year the Fire Department holds a steak dinner and every year they have meat left over and every year, we end up with 25lbs of new york strip steak. Guess who came home with steak this year and had no place to put it?

Even more important, GUESS WHO HAS A NEW ENERGY STAR FREEZER? Ha! I say!  Resistance is futile.

Happy Christmas to Me

…knitting updates forthcoming, I promise! The freezer is just more interesting than my CPH at this point (this point being two sleeves and not much else). ;o)



A Road Trip and some Spinning…

Monday, October 29th, 2007

First let me say one thing. YAY SOX!!!!

Okay I’m done.

Last Monday, RR had a day off so we decided to take a short day trip to Vermont for apples, possibly some wine and to see the views:

No Parking

Scenic

Impala

I know, more autumn color, are you guys sick of it yet? …moving on.

I also wanted to share a photo from the Fire Department’s Steak Dinner that took place last Sunday:

Hotties at the Steak Dinner ;o)

(the guy on the Left is RR) …finally, I did a bit of spinning this weekend:

Spinning!

That’s it for now! Hope you all had a great weekend!



I was holding out…

Friday, October 26th, 2007

…on you. I didn’t show you guys all of my Rhinebeck photos the other day because I felt that some of them were more fitting for my ECF post.

Behold! Autumn color a la Rhinebeck!

Autumn Color 1

Autumn Color 2

Autumn Color 3

Autumn Color 4

ETA: I just found this while going through my Bloglines (WHY I stick with them is beyond me since they don’t pick up my feed half the time and I have to ping them…ANYWAY), Google has set up a donation page for those of us who would like to donate to either the Red Cross or the Salvation Army to help with relief/recovery efforts in the California fires.