The Icebox got Iced

Just in time for the New Year, my refrigerator decided to up and quit.

I know, right? Imagine my horror at waking up this morning and finding that the beer was warm.

NOBODY DRINK THE BEER! THE BEER HAS GONE WARM.

And then I remembered that it was 7.30 on a Monday morning and that there was nobody else in my house and that I was yelling at nothing but the figments of my imagination.

There is a special irony in having a fridge that does not work when the temperature outside is markedly below the industrial standards necessary for refrigeration.

I had brief flashbacks to the good old days at the Sun office, when we would be too lazy to schlep the beer all the way up the stairs to where the fridge was. So instead we would open the door and nestle the cases of beer outside amongst the snow drifts. Then, of course, we would need to set a timer, for if we left the beer out in the cold wasteland tundra of Ithaca for more than 20 minutes, the beer would freeze. And this would create frozen beer chips, which sounds awesome in theory, but anyone who has attempted to drink a beer with frozen beer chips in it can tell you that they are highly inconvenient, like the fatty parts in a steak.

Anyhow, the fact that technology has failed would not be a big deal if I could just put all my perishables outside in the snow. However, I live on a sixth floor. Dropping my beer on the snow here sounds somewhat dangerous when you consider it's a 50-odd foot drop, hopefully not on the head of some unfortunate pedestrian. While it seems like an easy fix, I have learned the hard way that tossing things out of windows occasionally has consequences.

And going down the elevator and setting them down gently would solve that problem, but then who, I ask you, who would keep vigilance over my unattended food items? I suppose I could, but it's cold outside.

Because people would eat them. Oh, trust me on this one, absolutely people would eat them. If you were walking down the street and chanced upon a nice little stack of beer and black forest ham, wouldn't you stop and have yourself a spontaneous picnic? F$%* and Yes you would.

So here I sit, slowly eating what seems like 4 pounds of ham. Why do I have so much ham? Well, I like my sandwiches to be roughly the width of a hypothetical Double Big Mac. And since I like to buy at least one week's supply of the stuff, necessity requires that I purchase it wholesale, in bulk. If I couldn't fashion a full-sized pig out of the available items in my refrigerator at any point in time, I'm due for a grocery run.

My landlord has informed me that I should be getting a new, working refrigerator sometime today, which should end this sudden and unplanned excursion into our past. I can't say I have learned much in the past few hours of being a hunter and gatherer, except that trying to hunt the ducks in the Boston Common is frowned upon by both children and the authorities.