09:41 – It was 54.0F (12C) when I took Colin out at 0640, clear and breezy. The little dog was again nowhere to be seen, although she did show up shortly after we came back in the house. She was gone again by the time I took Colin out after his breakfast.
Frances and Al made a quick trip up. They arrived Friday afternoon and stayed the night. We had an early dinner yesterday, after which they headed back home because they had things to do there.
We’ve never been happy with our current refrigerator. It’s a Whirlpool, and is the only Whirlpool appliance that we’ve ever been unhappy with. It’s only about ten years old, and we’ve had problems with it for about eight of those years, starting with the ice-maker dying shortly out of warranty. The only reason we’re still using that refrigerator is that it still works. We actually talked about leaving it at the Winston house when we moved, but there were so many costs involved in moving that we decided to take it along with us.
I overheard Barbara and Frances the other day as they were packing stuff into the refrigerator. Barbara mentioned she’d like to replace it. So this morning I suggested we head over to Blevins this week and buy a new one as an early Labor Day gift to ourselves. She said that was a great idea.
I get the old one. We’ll move it downstairs into the unfinished area, where it’ll become my lab/LTS storage fridge. I already have one of those 3-foot tall dorm fridges down there, which we’ll also keep. That’ll give us a total of four units: the new kitchen refrigerator/freezer, the old one, the dorm fridge downstairs, and the vertical freezer in the garage.
I’ll move all of my stuff from the vertical freezer in the garage. Right now that includes a bunch of #10 cans of high-value stuff like Augason powdered eggs and bulk quantities of various antibiotics. The highest value stuff will go in the freezer part, which I’ll set to the lowest temperature possible. The less critical stuff will go in the refrigerator part, which I’ll also set to the lowest temperature I can. Relative to room-temperature storage, that will extend shelf-life by at least a factor of four. I’ll pack the refrigerator part solid with stuff like jars of alfredo sauce, canned meats, Nestle Nido, evaporated milk, etc.