Intergalactic House of Paisley

Monday started with the excavation of the dead freezer. Only took three 42-gal, 3 mil trash bags to haul it all out. We still have to deal with the mutant offspring of the Slough of Despond and the Bog of Eternal Stench left in the bottom of it, but as long as it closed, we can't smell it (yet).

And so I return home tonight after another thrilling day in happyland, and am greeted by Dragonet informing me she has shut down the furnace as the pump that moved the water through the pipes and into the radiators was banging around so horribly it was making the entire apparatus shake. We've got someone coming over tomorrow to look at it, and lots of clothes and blankets and kittens and space heaters, but, damn! I'm going to be watching out for aircraft carriers falling from the sky for the next little bit.

Back when we moved in here, there was a chest freezer in the basement the former owners didn't feel like moving. We put the freezer Rohanna had in her house across from it, and had lots of storage space. When we suffered through the winter of Lake Poobegon, the folks who replaced the line from the house to the sewer cleaned everything up, and the last guy out turned off the light in that room. A couple of days later, I went downstairs and noticed the lights off. I walked into that room, and for the first time noticed the switch on the far wall by the Dorothy door. I flipped the switch, and Ro's old freezer wheezed to life. I opened it, and sure enough, everything was nice and thawed. Lost a lot of Bambi, which really hurt.

So this morning, Ro and I went to a couple of grocery stores and Costco on the first part of the grocery run. Picked up a bunch of fish, among other things, and I went to the basement to put some of it down there. After storing things in the freezer of the refrigerator down there, I went to the chest freezer to look for a chicken to take out to thaw. I opened the freezer, went "what's that incredible smell?" and noticed the pooling liquid in the bottom. Alas, that freezer had also shot craps. A couple of turkeys, several corned beeves, and miscellaneous other items are gone, if not forgotten.

Tomorrow evening I'll go down there with trash bags and pack it all up. Fortunately, we just bought stickers for putting out more than the two bags we are limited to here. But all in all, not a good thing.