Monday, November 20, 2017

Thanksgiving Closing In On US . . .

In just a few days will be Thanksgiving celebration with big eats for all.  This year Jacob and his family are coming, Chris will be here and James and Joan will do the cooking at our house.  There will be grand kids and great grand kids running all over the place.  Sleep accommodations are stretched to the point we have to rent hotel rooms for some of the guests.  We will have between 18 or 19 guests.

Right now the only doubtful guest is Grandson James Dunn who is a student at University of Oklahoma and it is an iffy if he will attend.  I am pretty sure he will attend but you never know what a young adult may opt to do with his precious time off for the school grind.  Who can blame him for running off to South Padre Island or even Florida.

But there are issues more than hotel rooms.  About 10 days ago the main inside refrigerator died.  Well no problem, there are stores like Lowe's and Home Depot that sell refrigerators of all kinds.  We did a bit of shopping and did purchase a super duper refrigerator from Lowe's.  Now here's the rub.  They do not have it in stock so it must be shipped in.

Okay the shipped in deal takes three to five days.  And we got a call from Lowe's that the machine was indeed here.  But getting from "here" to the house is another matter.  It appears to me that here is a central location in the Dallas/Fort Worth complex that all the local Lowe's stores use and access.  So getting the refrigerator from "here" to the house is yet another scheduled event.  And it only occurs in our neighborhood twice a month even though the local Lowe's is only five miles away.

So now we have to wait for the refrigerator to be delivered.  The delivery is scheduled, and say scheduled because we have no idea what will really happen, for Tuesday, November 21 or just three days before Thanksgiving.

We take supposedly delivery of a smoked turkey on the 21st, deliver by lord who knows and must pick up a spiral sliced ham on the same day.  Got to put those suckers somewhere for a couple of days.  They are bulky and require cooled space.

We do have a spare refrigerator in the garage, an old Sears machine that just keeps on going.  It is maxed out already with cold drinks and its freezer is fully stocked.  In other words, space is limited and no turkey or ham will fit in the remaining space.  It is a fine old side by side machine we bought in Arizona back in 1997, we removed the ice maker for more space in the freezer portion but it is filled up with stuff, some of which came out of the inside dead refrigerator.  So current cooled space is at a premium for existing food stuffs and no room for a smoked turkey or a spiral sliced ham.

So that new super duper doozy of a refrigerator, ala LG brand, had damn well better show up or we are up the proverbial creek.  I am sure it will arrive.

It is black stainless steel finish (we could not find a just black refrigerator), has "French Doors," a pull out storage area that can be a crisper or a freezer by selection, a see-through right door, LCD lighting and a freezer on the bottom.  It is a counter depth unit as that is what our kitchen space allows. The ice maker/cold water dispenser is in the left door (and so is the filter).  The filter was a big deal to me as I had a lot of trouble with filter in the dead refrigerator located in the refrigerator section up in the top right corner.  Not a very convenient place nor easy to deal with.

The lighted door thing is a "tap on, tap off" rig.  A double tap on the right door of the new machine allows you to see what is on the door shelves inside the refrigerator.  On the left door is displayed the controls and the temperatures.  Kinda swanky-funky thing but meets our needs.

We saw the same machine at Home Depot as at Lowe's but Lowe's gave us an additional military discount.  Home Depot said that all their units were already deeply discounted.  We the same unit at Lowe's was 10% cheaper to us than at the Home Depot.  We also looked at Best Buy, and they had basically all the same units at slightly higher prices and no discounts.

Mean while we are keeping our fingers cross and hope it all works out.  Now I have to locate a heater for the back patio.  I'm hoping Harbor Freight is going to doing the trick for us.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.