The Fridge Isn't Fridging

It's the weekend, meaning the fridge is on the fritz and no longer really fridging.

Noticed last night that the milk I had with my Pop Tarts was a little on the warm side, but we'd also just returned from a massive shopping trip and had crammed a lot of food into the fridge, so I figured it needed some time to recombobulate.

But this morning, same problem.

I vacuumed the condenser in the hopes that fixes the problem, but hours after that chore got done, this is what we're looking at:

It's not the most scientific method, using a meat thermometer wedged between two blocks of cheese, but it's all I've got at the moment. I'll keep an eye on things and see how things look later on, and then in the morning.

I've got a cooler and a jug of water in the freezer as a backup.

Odd thing: The freezer on the fridge is doing just fine, it's just the refrigerator compartment that's not fridging correctly.

Cleaning Out the Car Hold

Today, a very kind and excited lady living nearby on Leroy Drive came and took the cabinet I've had in the garage for the past few years, furthering my efforts to get the garage cleaned out.

That, combined with me going through all sorts of boxes of crud, tossing the trash, and condensing the rest, means I've got a lot more shelf space, though it's going quickly.

Compare this photo to the montage I offered earlier this week.

I've still got a way to go, but getting that cabinet out of the garage and into a place where it'll be filled with dishes rather than my garage garbage is a good feeling.

I would dearly love that mattress and box spring to disappear, but that's not going to happen until our daughter and son-in-law decide they want it after they get a house or an apartment locally. We'll have to see what happens then.

Closing in on the dream:

Thanks, Daffy

I love that my kids and I have such precious shared memories.

How Long 'Til Retirement? Part Infinite.

Arbitrarily, I have about 12 years to retirement.

At the end of Thursday, July 24, I'm not sure I'm going to survive another twelve hours.

And this is all coming a week before I have to head back to the cubicle farm, where I went today to pick out my cubicle. Working from home has been utterly awesome; I'm sad to see it go away because it made other people sad.

Sadder still to be dealing with some arbitrary editing conventions that exist only in the netherworld, not necessarily in any of our written standards. I have, at this point, given up on trying to outguess said netherworld.

That appears to have paid off, since the last word from the netherworld is that the situation is "error prone," and will be stopped. Until the next directive arrives, of course.

Wordle Spoiler - and A Miracle

No one -- including myself -- will believe this happened.

No one will believe it happened without cheats or hints, except me. Because it's just how it happened. "What word should I start with today? Why not water?"

Just like this. No one will believe me.

This also happened today: First time to get the most difficult (purple) grouping first:

Chess Pie?

The fun part in playing online games, be they Wordle or Connections or crossword puzzles, is learning new things.

Take today's connections, which resulted (spoilers) in the following:

The purple category is always a challenge -- and it brought me, toay, to chess pie. Who knew that was a thing?

I hope this is a wider application in the south than "finger steaks" are in Idaho. Those in the western part of the state seem to think finger steaks are ubiquitous throughout Idaho. I'm here, in East Idaho, to say these breaded chewy bits of gristle are not as ubiquitous as people think.

Nor have I ever heard anyone refer to a ground hog or marmot as a "whistle pig."

Geyser with Pedant

It's the kind of stuff they warn you about in literature when you go into the park, but you never think you're going to be the one to run afoul of a geyser pedant until you do.

Other things we saw:

The Biscuit Basin closure. The road into the basin is closed since, well, this, and they have done nothing to clean things up, which I think is fine. You can see the destruction without even leaving the road.

This is new video of the event I hadn't seen before. So glad I wasn't there.

Stuff Still Cumbers the Ground of My Vineyard

 

As I continue my fruitless efforts to cram all of our stuff into the same amount of space, I have begun a garage contents recombobulation that is going to fail, of course, but at least I tried.

This recombobulation, of course, has bled into the shed and into the carport, which is itself a temporary measure that I'm still impressed survived the winter.

The goal in the garage is to make that big wooden cabinet disappear, because it's just turned into an inefficient way to store stuff. It's bulky and awkward and, at the end of all things, was just a place to cram stuff and forget about it.

I am hoping to crawl up what walls I can to find good ways to store things. I've also gone through what I've got and taken some stuff to Deseret Industries to it can go on to cumber someone else's vineyard.

Outland: Thirty Years Later, Still Blah

 

As much as I love Bloom County, Outland just isn't there.

And I know this review is more than 30 years late. It's taken me that long to sit and read an entire Outland collection -- a find at a local thrift store. I know a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since 1992, and Bloom County has actually come back.

But Outland was pretty blah.

Templates . . .

I spent a good portion of my day making a document worse because the template's set up that way.

I've also - slowly - been developing a template for another type of document. I'm purposely leaving it as open on headings and format as possible, so we don't end up in a situation like the one I find myself in now.

Templates are good. They help us to remember to include what needs to be there. But while some documents are template-friendly in their rigidity, others not so much. We need more guidelines than rules.

And while the template I'm working with isn't as sinister as the Black Pearl, it's still going to be a jolly time this Monday explaining to my customer why things have changed so. Which means in making the change I have to be very, very precise. Which is going to take time. Which will upset the customer. But my job often entails listing to the one who makes the scariest threat on a given day, so that's the way things go.

I still very much like this job, enough I've encouraged Michelle to apply for a similar position that just opened up. It's amazing what we'll put up with to keep a roof over our heads. I hope she gets the job. Then we can commiserate more over things like templates.