Chicken Little

No, really, the sky is falling! Or at least our house seems to be falling apart around us. A week or so ago, a storm took down part of the silver maple in front of our house. The next day, our microwave made a loud POP and promptly stopped microwaving. Somewhere around there our phone quit working, and yesterday we came home to a pool of water on the kitchen floor and a refrigerator full of distinctly unrefrigerated food. (I'm a little bit scared to be using the computer right now, lest I wreak some similar destruction upon it.)

Some of these have a bright side. The maple only lost one substantial branch, and it fell in the only part of the yard where it could possibly have fallen without doing any damage to anything. The microwave is still dead, but we actually still had our old microwave in a box in the garage from the last time we moved (the house came with a built-in one), so that at least has a temporary solution. It took AT&T a full four days to fix the damn phone, and the "fix" involves a large black cable strung over our neighbor's fence and through the yard, so I'm hoping that story's not quite over yet, but at least the phone works, which is good because we need it to call all the other repair people.

The fridge is being more obstreperous, and more puzzling. The motor works, and it blows air, but the air is not particularly cold. Naturally, we discovered this on a Friday evening, so we spent the evening buying ice, rounding up the coolers, and trying to decide whether the previously frozen stuff was at all salvageable. Then I discovered that the manufacturer had a website where you could make a service request, and, wonder of wonders! one local service place had an appointment available on Saturday. We jumped on it.

Except that Saturday morning, we get up to find... a perfectly working fridge. The freezer is frozen again, and the fridge is warmish but clearly on its way to cooling. WTF? We debate about whether to keep the service appointment, because something clearly *had* gone wrong even if it fixed itself. But then we decided that a) a Saturday service call was going to cost us an arm and a leg, and b) if the thing was running perfectly, the service guy probably wouldn't be able to tell what was wrong with it.

So I cancelled, and we loaded all the stuff from the cooler back to the freezer, and went about our business.

Until, later this afternoon, I went to put some leftover lunch things away, and... again the damned thing is blowing lukewarm. I try kicking it a few times, which doesn't seem to have much effect besides scaring the cats. I call the service guys back, and they say sorry, not only did you lose your place today, but we don't have any openings again till Wednesday.

This week of course is the last week of class, which means there are countless meetings piled on top of the usual schedule, so I have no idea when we're going to find a way to be home during the precious rare minutes that the service people are willing to come out. I think we're pretty much doomed. Anyone wanna come over for a big meat/cheese/egg/yogurt feast before it all goes bad? Come quick, before the stove breaks down.