Technology Overload

If you've been following my blog, you know that at the end of May Jason and I had a little fridge trouble. In case you missed it, you can read all about it here.

When we went shopping for a fridge, we were reminded how expensive they are. I don't remember what we paid for our original appliance, but we bought it about 11 years ago. Obviously, prices have gone up. Due to the scary costs (and that fact that we were going to have to wait for about 2 weeks to actually get a fridge delivered), we came up with a cheap and temporary solution. Our "band-aid" was to spend $450 to get a small, unimpressive fridge.We'd been saying for years that we wanted to buy something that we could put in our garage for extra storage. So, we decided to go ahead and get that fridge. For now it's in our kitchen, being a temporary place holder for our "real fridge." 

I am taller than this fridge.
And I am only 5'4".

We are thankful to have a fridge and to have gotten one quickly (we got it the day after ours croaked) and for fairly cheap. Even better, we have 18 months of no interest (but, since it was only $450, it shouldn't take us that long to pay it off). 

This weekend, we headed to Lowe's Home Improvement to get a couple of things we needed for our house. While we were there, we decided to go look at refrigerators again (since this time we weren't in panic mode). We're not ready to get our "real fridge" yet, but figured it wouldn't hurt to just browse and start taking notes. We came across one unit that had me so flabbergasted. I just stood there, staring at the thing, asking "what in the hell is going on here?" 

 This fridge had apps. As in, things you download on your smartphone. Or on a tablet. Trust me, I can't make this stuff up. 

This is the screen on the fridge.

I don't know if you can download other apps, but here are the ones that the display model was showing. I can understand Pandora - often when I'm washing dishes or cooking, I like to bring my Ipod and the speaker dock into the kitchen so I can listen to music. But, what the hell is the purpose of Twitter on your fridge? What, am I going to tweet to the world that "I'm getting a can of biscuits outta my fridge"? And Weatherbug? Seriously? When I want to know the forecast, I turn to my phone or TV... or even look out the window. I don't look to my fridge. 

The fridge itself was purty.

Shiny!

But the price tag wasn't.

Good grief. Will it cook dinner for me too?

I wanted to play with the screen more than I got to, but Jason saw the look on my face and figured he'd better pull me away before I became enamored with this thing (too late, babe). In my defense, I'm (slightly) better than that. For one, I don't get the purpose for having apps on my fridge. And, another thing, I am well aware of our poorness. In other words, I ain't spending that kind of money on an appliance...that is, unless said appliance did something really special. But, if I want to tweet something frivolous about my life, I'm not going to do that standing at my fridge. Seriously, I don't need to be connected to the world by every item in my house. I promise.

A post in which I whine. A lot.

The Universe is against me. I don't know which offensive action has pushed my luck over the edge (there are so many to choose from), but I am currently being bitch slapped by Karma.

This happy action fun time started last weekend when I came down with a sinus infection. Oh joy. Being one who hates to go to the doctor, I suffered through the days. But, knowing that a 3-day weekend was coming up, I decided to make an appointment so that I could (hopefully) get some good drugs to help me out. I did get some medicine and have been diligently taking it.

This weekend I did a lot of laying around on the couch. I even took naps on Saturday and Sunday. I rarely take naps. Rarely. But, my body/mind/soul was just that exhausted.

Yesterday, Jason and I had plans to attend a cookout at our friends' house around noon. I was slotted to bring cookies and these crescent roll things with a cream cheese mixture in the middle (it was a recipe I found that I thought sounded good and would be fun to make - correct on both of those, thankyouverymuch). I baked the cookies Saturday night and figured I'd make the other dish Monday morning.

Jason and I woke up Monday to find a puddle of water under our refrigerator and most of the stuff in the freezer defrosted. We assumed (hoped) that one of us just hadn't closed the freezer door all the way Sunday night. So, Jason mopped up the puddle, we turned down the thermostat to the freezer to make it colder faster to refreeze everything again. This was around 9:40am.

I made the crescent roll things (obviously, I have no idea what the hell these things are actually called), we both showered and got ready to head to the cookout. Before we left, we checked our freezer... It wasn't feeling one bit colder than it had felt at 9:40. What. The. Hell? Jason checked the fridge. Hmmm, that's also warmer than it should be.

At this point, we needed to leave for the cookout. We were all ready going to be a little late. So, in complete denial, we told ourselves that since I had been baking that morning and it was all ready a very warm day, our kitchen was just hot and therefore the fridge/freezer just needed more time to get cold. Yeah, that's it. That has to be it.

No. No it doesn't. Because the Universe hates me. And the Universe knows I'm poor.

 We came home a handful of hours later to find a very un-cold refrigerator. Oh shit. We do not have time to deal with this. We do not have the money for a new fridge.

Thankfully we still have Jason's college dorm fridge. We keep it in our basement/Jason's man cave. We were able to get most of our food from the fridge in that thing. And, our next door neighbor has a freezer in her garage where she keeps excess food. We were able to squeeze our frozen food in there. After we took care of the food, we hit the road, heading to check out a few appliance stores in the area... where we learned an important lesson:

You cannot walk into a store and walk out with a fridge. At least, not a fridge that you actually want. Most stores just do not stock fridges. We had contemplated buying a floor model, but that was an issue because most of those were stainless steel. While we love the look, our appliances are white and the silver color won't really match the rest of our decor.

On a good note - most of the stores we went to last night do have some kind of financing available. On a bad note - most everyone told us that it would be DAYS to actually get our fridge to us (one store said  it would be about 2 weeks. At which point I attacked the sales guy like a spider monkey. Or at least wanted to do that).

So, that's where Jason and I are right now - fridgeless. We ended up coming home defeated last night. But got online to look at our options again sans annoying sales guys. We've  found one we like at Home Depot AND they currently have a 24 month, no interest deal going. So, Jason is heading there today to get this ball rolling. Keep your fingers crossed that all goes well for us.

Oh, and I still struggling with that crappy sinus infection.