Rando Meanderings

I am writing this in advance of upcoming associated pics so just keep that in mind. However I will tie it up with an bit of an entertainment spin.

Steph and I went to pick up a nice little vintage refrigerator last week to use in her booth display in her upcoming appearance at the annual Renegade Craft Fair here in San Francisco. She's been busting her hump getting ready for the event so I thought I could help by giving her some ideas in how to layout her booth space. It seems we're on the same page either a kitchen or a picnic theme would work well. I sent her a few Craigslist ads for some old vintage fridges and she liked one and we gathered it up. Upon bringing it home we discovered that the underside was infested with spiders and other bugs. Let me just say I loathe spiders. If I can see a spider then it is too close to me. Needless to say this fridge will also live in our house and we cannot invite a bug party into our house. SO it had to be cleaned out. it took a vacuum cleaner, a hose and finally a half can of bug spray to make sure we got it done. The sighting of a very ugly and indestructible Black Widow was enough to send me running for the hills.

The next chapter in this story involves us, well actually me, becoming ecological terrorists. Unintentionally of course. I'll explain. We have no intentions of using this as an actual fridge and it's condenser assembly accounted for a great deal of extra weight so it had to come out. Now, let it be known that my handyman acumen comes more for from intuition and bravado than it does actual skill. I know this because I am the DI Guy (A story for another time). As such I set forth on a mission to remove the condenser. The removal of the rusted steel ball-like structure was surprisingly easy, until it came to the inevitable copper tubing that led into the freezer section. I know there is freon in a fridge and I know it's a gas and I know it's bad to let it out, but I didn't really think there would be much left inside. Wrong. Upon sawing the tube off it let out a loud hissing sound which Steph concluded sounded like an imminent explosion waiting to happen. Who knows? But the real issue was all the grease (although I had no idea this was grease at first) that spewed out onto the floor. It was like I'd cut an artery and I was watching this compressor in it's death throws. It occurred to me as I hefted it into the dumpster that it was indeed a very unceremonious ending for a machine born half a century ago and probably still worked however inefficiently. I probably should have buried it in Golden Gate Park and said a few words. However, there was the very real issue of the compresser's goo all over our garage floor to deal with. That and a very militant HOA that we dare not incur the wrath of lest we see our names emblazened across the HOA Yahoo group making mention that we or rather I am a moron. My brilliant plan was to simply hose it down. Very bad idea. The grease which I did not know at the time was grease spead across the garage floor and created a very slippery slick like algae covered river rock floor which was certain to cause somebody to tumble and most certainly break some vital bone and agin there would be mention on the HOA board of this misstep. Steph quickly ran into the house and got some dish soap and we scrubbed the floor until the grease had vanished. On her way back she saw posted on the bulletin board a number that one could call for non other than "REFRIGERATOR FREON REMOVAL!" Oh dear! Needles to say we got the job done and now we're ready to use it as a book shelf in our giant downstairs bathroom. I think that's a good next phase of it's life. Pics to come.

NEXT:

Yesterday I went to the doctor, which is not something I am given to doing often because I am a pretty healthy dude. But, of concern is the fact that Steph says sometimes I snore a bit, and even worse sometimes I stop breathing and she has to wake me up. She's usually very calm about it but I know that's probably not cool to have to witness. So I went to the doctor to make sure I don't have sleep apnea and if so I get treated for it. My dad has it and does nothing about it and it drives my mom insane. I don't want to drive Steph insane. Anyway, the test is pretty simple I received a kit containing this awesome looking cyborg like glove device with probes that go over the fingers. I felt totally sci-fi wearing this thing to bed. I'm also certain that the sleep technicians will puzzle over the fact that it only recorded about 3 hours of actual sleep. Pics to come.


Entertainment values:

A band that I've recently fallen in love with is a little Swedish group called Fever Ray, which is actually a side project by a member of another group. But the music is epic to me. It features a brooding female vocalist and I'm all over it.

Another band I'm into is called Battles and they feature the ex drummer from Helmet who were like music gods to me in the early 90's. HEre is a little video clip that someone did for the track which I actually think is quite clever.