in the realm of the fictionman

Is There an Exorcist in the House?

We have a little fridge downstairs for drinks and iguana food. It's easier than running up and down the stairs, and it frees up space in the kitchen fridge for, well, food.

But twice a year or so it gets...over-excited? It'll be working fine for months and months, and then something happens. Maybe the spirits of the house think the spirits in the fridge should be served colder. Maybe the thing is possessed. Maybe the knob gets bumped. But it suddenly freezes everything. It doesn't have a freezer compartment, officially.

But some mornings I go in there for iguana food—and there's this mess everywhere. Frozen vegetables, sticky mess all over. Usually it's glass-bottle-failure. This time it was a bunch of glass pieces held together by a label and partially surrounding a big chunk of white zinfandel. Anybody want a piece of wine? There was also one pop can that suffered containment breech, with two others that were nearing critical mass...

Apparently, wine freezes before beer. There's probably some good science in there. At bartending school we were warned about how dangerous a frozen champagne bomb bottle could be.

Another learning is that frozen carrots don't grate well.

So we'll be buying a thermometer we can put in there to monitor temperatures for a while. We'll find the right spot on the knob, and mark it. If we have another problem after that, I think it'll be exorcism time.

Posted by fictionman at February 16, 2004 06:20 PM