The Refrigocalypse is over: Birt’s Furniture delivered our new Whirlpool fridge this morning just after 9:00 a.m., 3 days earlier than planned after I made a call earlier in the week when things went sideways with the old fridge.

The new fridge is, in design essence, almost a clone of the old fridge; I’ve always been under the impression that there is a single global maker of refrigerators, throwing different brand plates on at random, and this only serves to reinforce that assumption.

A couple of notes on the purchase and delivery process, should you be in the market and considering Birt’s:

• To take the old fridge away was an additional $20 fee. That seems fair, given how complicated it would be to do it myself.
• To get the fridge into the house, the delivery people needed to use the back door, and needed to remove the door itself, and break down the fridge, to get it to fit into the house. In other words, this is the largest possible box that can fit into our house.
• Our kitchen and hallway floor got scratched in a couple of places by the removal of the old fridge; nothing too serious, but a little annoying.
• I had to reverse the door, so that it opened on the right, myself. I knew this going in: my Birt’s salesperson told me “this isn’t something we do.” It wasn’t that difficult, but it did need some tools that not everyone would have: star-shaped screwdrivers in a couple of sizes, for example. This seems like something an appliance store should offer as a service, even if it’s an upset.
• The manual for the fridge is horrible: filled with poor descriptions and hard-to-follow graphics. If I was looking for work, I’d offer myself out as a refrigerator manual designer, as there’s obviously a lot of room for improvement here.
• The delivery people were friendly and helpful, and nothing at all like the notoriously gruff and complaining crew we used to get every time we had something delivered from Sears.

This was the first major appliance I’ve purchased all by myself: from our first appliances in our Kingston Road house back in 1995 onward, Catherine and I were always an appliance-shopping team, and we were generally a compatible one (although we had a longstanding disagreement about the role of standalone freezers that was never resolved). I managed to figure this purchase all out on my own, and I’m happy with the result. But also a little sad about yet another now-solo milestone checked off the list.

Nine years ago today, Oliver, Catherine and I spent the day by the lake at an abandoned German tuberculosis sanatorium at a festival of urban art.

It was, perhaps, the zenith of our life as an adventuring team of three: there was art, music, nature, public transit, danger, whimsy.

Maximal Venn.

This comment from Chuck about his son and school is worth highlighting (emphasis mine):

He and I have since concluded that school was simply not challenging enough. Not just in the sense of “not challenging given his abilities,” but in the sense of “all the challenges are artificial.” Jason had figured out in Grade 1 that school is just a place where adults warehouse kids so we can get things done during the day, and any learning that takes place there is almost incidental. Homeschool was better but only marginally; he simply was not interested learning until it meant something. He wanted to test his mettle against others at work that mattered, and see how he measured up.

The gift that computer programming provided me, from age 14 onward, is that it allowed me to escape from the artificial challenges associated with credentialing to confront real challenges, like “tell me how much model airplane glue I have in stock.” Contrasted against “enumerate the themes of The Cask of Amontillado,” this was thrilling, and provided me with agency the likes of which I’d never known.

The CBC reported on counterfeit $100 bills in Summerside, and included and image provided by Summerside Police.

Why, if they had what looks like a credible $100 bill, would a counterfeiter add blue and white text in Chinese?

And why would anyone accept such a bill?

Ton points to K.Q. Dreger, writing about their day:

It’s always fascinating to read how people really, not theoretically, go through their day.

I’ve always wished writers would do that more; I’ve found my own practice to be more valuable than any photo I’ve ever taken and reminding me of days gone by.

Brent Simmons writes about high school:

I envy the people who had a nice time at school. For me it was a struggle against stupid, unfeeling power the entire time. I truly hated it. When I wasn’t in trouble, when I was actually sitting in class, I was just watching the minute hand on the clock, begging it to speed up, minute by minute. By my senior year I was the person in the school who skipped entire days the most. I stayed up late and slept way in lots of mornings.

Eventually I got suspended for smoking a cigarette without having filled out the paperwork.

Well. This is just to say that I preferred being at home, where I was reading and writing and writing computer programs. Like now.

There are young people who desperately need school for very practical reasons: food, warmth, sanctuary.

There are young people who thrive when they’re in a classroom learning from teachers and fellow students

And there are young people who don’t need school at all, who find it a toxic, frustrating, counterproductive activity.

As we’re building a system for COVID-learning, why not see if we can find a way to liberate these students from the tyranny of needing to buy what we’re selling.

If you’re going to look at a part of Prince Edward Island in Google Earth Timelapse, the area of Prince County from Birch Hill to Northport is a good one to start with, as much has happened over the last 35 years:

Notice in particular the dance of the barrier islands, and the expansion of the peat mining operation:

Author Lisa Halliday, with Tonny Vorm for a Louisiana Channel interview:

Halliday: I begin with a character in the sense that I begin with someone I want to spend a lot of time with, with someone who has either a certain kind of brain, that reverberates with my brain, or someone who is interesting and for whom I can find a kind of aesthetic solution, as I flesh him or her out. So I do begin with a character, yes I begin with a character, I realize now, that you ask, 

Vorm: And do you know, when you start writing, where the story will take you?

Halliday: Yes, to a degree, maybe 70% of the way. Or rather I know where the story will take me, but I don’t know where I will stop telling it to the reader.

The idea that there are parts of the story that keep going in he mind of the author, untold to the reader, is fascinating to me.

As is the idea of conjuring characters that are fun to hang out with.

Doug Boylan died on Saturday.

My first encounter with Doug was an indirect one: on the evening of the Provincial General Election of 1996, before the phones started to ring with results, I was in “election central” chatting with Charles MacKay, Clerk Assistant of the Legislative Assembly, who was running the logistics operation.

Charlie described to me how he’d gone into the attic of Province House to retrieve the materials for election night, and found there an impeccably organized collection: in-boxes and out-boxes and signs and instructions. This, he told me, was Doug Boylan at work, Doug from whom Charlie had inherited the election central managerial role.

Eventually I got to meet Doug himself, at several of Catherine Hennessey’s parties over the years, but our relationship didn’t really cement until, many years later, we ended up as breakfast regulars at Casa Mia Café on Queen Street. Every morning for several years, after dropping Oliver off at school, I would walk down to Casa Mia for coffee and a muffin and, more days than not, I would find Doug at a table near the front, carefully writing in a complex-looking set of books and binders I never learned the nature of.

Every now and again, when it looked like I wouldn’t be disturbing him too much, I’d stop for a chat on my way out the door. We’d talk politics, and Province House, and the Development Plan, and all manner of topics around and about Prince Edward Island. Doug had a cynical air about him, but it was a cynicism born of experience, and one rooted in a love for this province and its institutions. I suspect that, given his many roles in the public administration of the province, there was no single person who knew where the bodies were buried more than he (I may, in his memory, finally seek to determine which former deputy minister absconded with the cannons that formerly graced the front yard of Province House).

Doug became an enthusiastic supporter of my letterpress printing efforts, and was one of my Mail Me Something subscribers in 2011 (he was among the few the contributed financially to the effort: upon my return from Berlin that summer I found an envelope with a $20 bill and a thank you waiting in our mailbox). We exchanged more than a few emails over the years about typefaces and design.

Goodbye, Doug; you will be missed.

One morning early last October I went to the fridge to get milk for my coffee, and what I poured into the steaming cup emerged as a glop glop glop of milk gone bad. I checked the refrigerator: it was as warm as the room. Same for the freezer. 

While there’s no convenient time for a fridge to conk out, this was a particularly inconvenient time: Catherine was just out of hospital and the household was not operating at peak efficiency.

The fridge’s death was not unanticipated: it was 19 years old, with decaying seals and a noisy gait. So we opted to consider replacement rather than repair.

I made the rounds of the city’s appliance stores: M&M, Leons, The Brick, Best Buy, MacArthur’s, Home Depot. The search was made both easier and harder by the restrictions imposed by Catherine and by the available space: the replacement had to fit within 32” deep, 30” wide and 67” high, and it had to be a fridge with a freezer on the bottom. Put together, that narrowed our choices down to 1 or 2 models.

The search was further frustrated by the lack of stock in city stores: the quickest we could have a fridge in place was 10 days.

Perhaps repair was the only option? We consulted a friend who consulted a friend, and the advice we got back was to empty the fridge and freezer, unplug, wait 12 hours, and then see what happened.

This worked!

Our fridge, if not quite “as good as new” after an overnight rest, was back to cooling things.

I restocked.

At this point the logical follow-on action would have been to order a new fridge, but life interceded with distractions and complications, and, hey, the fridge was working.

And it kept working. And working.

This summer, though, I began to notice additional signs of decay: increased ice buildup in the freezer, condensation in the fridge, and anything put in the “crisper” drawers would freeze solid.

A week ago I went fridge shopping, using the same limitations, and a single model of fridge emerged as the clear choice: a Whirlpool WRB329DFBW. It fit the space. It had a bottom freezer. And there was local inventory: if I ordered last Monday, a new fridge could be delivered in a week.

But I hemmed and hawed: it’s a large investment, even if it will be amortized over the next 20 years. I shopped around. Checked Consumer Reports. 

It wasn’t until Saturday that I went out to actually make a purchase, from Birt’s Furniture (selected for having a fridge in stock rather than for any preference otherwise). Deal done. Delivery in a week.

On Monday night I went to pour myself a refreshing glass of iced tea, iced tea that had been chilling in the fridge for 5 or 6 hours. It was still hot.

I checked the thermometer in the fridge: 17.5ºC. Damn.

Unable to face the task ahead immediately, I left things as-is and went to bed. Tuesday morning I got up early and cleaned out the fridge (miraculously, the freezer is still working). Truth be told, it was in need of a clean-out: there were still not-very-perishable things, in back of the back, that Catherine had purchased before Christmas.

I called Birt’s to see about moving up the delivery date, and I’m waiting to hear back.

And I’m kicking myself still for my reticence a week ago: had I bought the fridge then, all of this could have been avoided.