Hotspur.us

Back to the refrigerator issue.

The problem appeared to be a wonky breaker. A short internet search and a trip to the nearby hardware super store, because at 8 pm the local place is wise enough to not be open, we had a new breaker in hand.

Swapping out procedure was simple. Turn off entire house. Remove questionable breaker. Replace with new breaker. Turn house back on. Test outlet. And…nothing.

Maybe it wasn’t the breaker. Maybe the outlet was bad. It was kind of gnarly. A brief inspection revealed what looked to be a single outlet. Single as in only one plug. These are things you don’t really notice when they are hidden behind giant appliances.

A hands and knees closer inspection led Chad to find that we had a regular outlet, someone had simply wallpapered over the top part. Wallpapered poorly.  And then calked it in place instead of using an outlet cover. Because of course they did.

Entire house back off, Chad scrunched himself into the refrigerator cubby working to free the outlet. As luck would have it, we had an extra brand new outlet hanging around. New outlet installed, I headed down to flip the breakers while Chad lay on the floor, ready to test the outlet when it came back online.

I had no sooner flipped the relevant breaker back on than I heard Chad very clearly shout “TURN IT OFF!” This was surprising, since he was not directly overhead and the basement door was shut. He may as well have been standing right beside me for the volume and clarify of his directive.  

“So…” I asked, returning to the kitchen and seeing him still in one piece on the floor.

“Flames.”

“Ah.”

“Electrician it is, then.”

Did the refrigerator light only come on if both doors were open? Three years of refrigerator ownership and you’d think I would know. I didn’t. I opened both doors. Still no light. Miffed that the fancy LED light had died an early death, I decided to ignore the issue until morning.

Saturday morning confirmed the light still did not work. But since the kitchen was flooded with daylight, it wasn’t much of a hardship. A gallon of milk is pretty easy to find when it’s on the door.
It occurred to me on Sunday morning as I stared blankly into the empty abyss, that the inside of the refrigerator did not seem to be very chilly. And then the lightbulb in my head went off…the entire thing wasn’t working!

Down to the basement to inspect the breaker boxes. And indeed, there were two unlabeled breakers thrown. That’s an easy fix. I flipped them back on and trudged back to the kitchen. The refrigerator was still not running.

Now, I’m not typically the kinda girl who is going to sit around and wait for the hubs to come home and save the day. But I’m also not big enough to pull the refrigerator away from the wall. I’m short, it’s big. I waited. And stopped looking in the refrigerator.

I’m embarrassed to say that instead of letting the hubs come home and not have to immediately deal with the unfolding chaos of this weekend, I met him at the door and gave him the low down. He easily moved the refrigerator and plugged it into another outlet. Hooray! It worked! That was fairly good news.
Back down to the basement I trudged, trusty flashlight in hand, to flip breakers one by one while he listened to the refrigerator, until we could figure out where the problem was. It took two rounds until we found the bad breaker, which was A. loose, B. unlabeled, and C. now on the list for repair.

Current kitchen configuration: heavy duty extension cord running across the countertop. It’s perfectly safe. I’m sure.

Late for a meeting, I duck into the first parking garage I see with vacancies. Downtown is wretched for parking and I didn’t want to waste valuable time hunting for a spot closer to my destination.

Snapped a pic of the location pillar closest to Roo (my car), another at the elevator, and yet another of the sign about the floors of the garage.

When I finally reached the surface – underground parking is not my favorite thing and I had failed to comprehend that I hadn’t taken the elevator to the ground floor of the building – I took in my surroundings, made a mental note of the unattractive building I spotted as I emerged into daylight from the subway, and high-tailed it to my meeting several blocks away; the parking stub safely zipped in my bag.

Meeting over, I retraced my steps towards the parking garage, spotted the subway station entrance and headed unground. It took about 15 seconds to notice that nothing looked quite right.  I’d had a hell of a time finding my way from the elevator to the outdoors in the first place having not chosen my floor of exit very well.

I decided to follow the signs leading to the Garage & Elevator, assuming that would eventually get me where I needed to be. I ended up in a lobby. That totally was not right. But I did spy a pay kiosk which I took to be a good sign. Until it rejected my parking stub, twice. Feeling a little desperate, and tired, and hungry, I took the elevator down to Parking Level A. It was clearly NOT the right garage. The floor was color coded baby blue, instead of navy.

Back to the surface and outside to try again. I walked up and around and still was finding the right identifiers outside, but once underground it was all wrong. Fed up and not caring if I came across as an incompetent idiot, I located the concierge in the lobby and said wearily, as sweat rolled down my face, “I’m a complete idiot and am completely bloody turned around and can’t find the garage.”

One of the young men at the desk took pity on me and indicated to his colleagues that he would lead me to the garage. Having more than a sneaking suspicion that I was indeed in the wrong damn building, I showed him my parking ticket and sure enough, my original interpretation of the situation was correct. I was in the wrong building. Fortunately, the nice young man took pity on me and walked me through the underground connector between the not-right-building and the very-right-building, depositing me in front of the elevator to the garage. I thanked him profusely and said, “Well at least you’ve got a good story to tell about the idiot from WV who lost an entire parking garage.”

There’s an unfinished nest in the wisteria. It’s one column down from a nest stuffed full of baby robins. A pair of cardinals have come to check out the nest multiple times. I think they are interested, but just not sure if it’s worth a mortgage. The gent cardinal spends an inordinate amount of time carrying on nearby. I wonder if he’s trying to convince the Mrs. that it would be a great spot to raise a family. The other day Mr. C landed on my car and practically did a bird version river dance trying not to slide off.

Last night the birds were raising a ruckus. Dashing madly to the front door in case I was needed to scare off a predator, I instead saw a little ball of fuzz sitting awkwardly on the porch swing. It clearly wasn’t a robin; those kids are big and rather homely. Nearby Mrs. C peeped and flapped and fluttered at what, I could only assume, was her kid.

About this time, our cat Nyx finally realized something really very important was going on right outside the front door. She came barreling from the back of the house, plopped herself at my feet and commenced making terrible threats to Mrs. C, the fuzz, and the entire robin family who, quite frankly, were minding their own business.

The fuzz gave a few valiant flaps of its stubby wings, landing on the back of the porch swing. More encouragement ensued from Mrs. C, who took off to the pine tree bird condo, where I assume the family had found a better piece of real estate.

Nyx was still carrying on with her threats, so I shushed her out of the way and shut the big door, in the hopes that the fuzz wouldn’t pick up such dreadful language.

I checked later that night. No fuzz, no frantic parents. All was well.