Fridge

One year ago for Christmas, I purchased new appliances for my wife. Our kitchen was outfitted with a new range, oven, hood and a refrigerator with an ice-maker. After installing all the new appliances and transitioning our food from the old fridge to the new one, we quickly discovered that all our frozen food was melting. We called Whirlpool and they informed us that it may take up to 24 hours for the freezer to reach optimal temperature. We waited. All our frozen food spoiled. It never reached the right temperature (but at least the light came on). And Whirlpool refused to pay for our food to be replaced. They did, however, supply a serviceman who fixed the problem.

Imagine my surprise yesterday when, as I sat at the kitchen table eating my cinnamon swirl oatmeal, I could hear a strange dripping coming from the freezer. I opened the door, but didn't notice anything out of place. All the food seemed to still be frozen. I asked Andrea to step into the kitchen to see if she could hear the dripping noise as well. She heard it.

Within a minute or so, the dripping noise evolved, becoming a sizzling noise as if drips of water were hitting something hot. Now I was getting concerned. We pulled the drawer out of the bottom of the freezer and now could see the water dripping down and hitting a visibly red heating coil. Immediately we removed the food from the bottom of the freezer and I pulled the fridge about 5 feet away from the wall. I felt the back, but strangely it wasn't hot like I expected.

Concerned, worried, frustrated, I took a closer look into the freezer and then realized that this fridge is equipped with an automatic defrost. The coil is supposed to get hot. It's supposed to melt the frost that forms in the back of the freezer and it's supposed to make the water drip into a collection pan.

Oh well. This experience wasn't a total loss. While the fridge was away from the wall we were able to sweep back there and I found a raisin that must have rolled underneath, making the perfect addition to my cinnamon-swirl oatmeal.

Gold thing

Last night, my wife and I were watching TV. The station we were watching repeatedly aired an ad for Fruit of the Loom. I don't remember noticing how confusing their mascots are prior to this point. Clearly they have an apple, purple grapes, green grapes and....? What kind of fruit is that gold thing? They must get this question all the time, but to my knowledge this is the first time I have gotten around to asking.

Any ideas? My wife thought it may possibly be a golden raisin. I think that's a morbid suggestion. How awkward would it be for a raisin to be palling around with two bunches of healthy grapes. That is unless he is their wrinkly, sun-bleached, grandfather and Fruit of the Loom is striving for better generational understanding.

Mixed shale?

I teach the adult Sunday School class at church. Each year at Christmas, they usually put together a gift bag for me that includes various goodies. This year's gift bag included Emerald Deluxe Mixed Nuts. I'm a big fan of their products, so I opened and ate much of the can almost immediately.

Being that they were mixed nuts, I inspected each handful before eating it to see if I was getting walnuts, almonds, cashews or small rocks..... Rocks?..... Indeed.

I nearly bit on a rock neatly nestled in my yearly treat. It was salted and seasoned just like all the rest. Taking a cue from my good friend Paul who has a genuine talent for turning tragedy into free-product replacement, I wrote a brief message to Diamond Foods, the producer of Emerald nuts. Here is their brief reply.

Dear Mr. Stange:

Thank you for your recent e-mail to Diamond of California.

We were sorry to learn of your disappointment with Emerald Deluxe Mixed Nuts. I will be sending you a letter and refund coupons by US Postal Mail.

We appreciate your interest in our products.

Sincerely,
Donna Samelson
Manager Consumer Affairs

I will be sure to update you when I receive their letter and coupons. Buyer beware.

What did Jay say?

Last night, after a long day, I came home and relaxed on the couch. It was almost time for the kids to go to bed, but I convinced Andrea to let Jay stay up with me a little longer. I love all my children, but it seems that Jay has a special knack for making me crack up with the weird comments he makes. We were watching the Bills/Broncos game together and Jay said.......

"Dad, which is the team with the embers?"

"The embers? I don't even know what that is? What are you talking about?"

"The embers Dad. They're right there."

"Do you mean numbers?"

"No, embers."

"I don't even know what that means."

"Neither do I, but "bald" means "no hair."

A few more pictures

A few more pictures of Julia for those who are interested. I can hear her crying in the next room as I type. I'm pretty sure she's upset because I didn't ask her to sign a release before posting these pictures to my blog. Sorry kid....get used to it.

Welcome, New Kid

This morning around 6:00, Andrea woke me up and said she was having contractions, and if I hurried I would have time to get ready before taking her to the hospital. After we got ready, my sister Tami came to watch the other kids and we left for General Hospital in Wilkes-Barre.

Labor and delivery both went very well (easy for me to say). At 12:45pm, we welcomed Julia Ruth. She is 6lbs. 11.5 oz and 19 inches long.

Christmas lights

Well, since I didn't decorate my house this year for Christmas, I thought maybe I should decorate "Stump the Pastor."

For the best display of Christmas lights, click here. Make sure your speakers are on. You won't be disappointed.

My understanding is that the man who owns this home spends about two months getting his display ready. It takes quite a while to program the computer code to make his lights blink in time with the music. There is a sign in his yard that tells people to tune to a particular FM station. He sends out a low frequency that is picked up by that station, running a continuous loop of a song by Transiberian Orchestra (similar to how many drive-in movies operate). This is done so his neighbors don't have to hear the music (and most don't seem to mind the rapid blinking pattern of the lights either).

Dreaming

After a very busy Sunday at church, I do my best to take Mondays off. If I can, I make the attempt to sleep a little longer on Monday mornings. Sometimes I don't get that opportunity, but today I did. I loved it.

Have you ever had the experience where you know you had many dreams while you were sleeping, but you couldn't remember a single one? I had the opposite experience last night. I woke up today and remembered several dream sequences from last night.

Here are the highlights of what went through my mind as I slept last night. Be forewarned.....it doesn't make any sense.

Sequence 1: My wife and I were in our mini-van. Because of the winter weather, it has been a little dirty. It was a sunny day and we decided to stop at the car wash. As I pulled through the bay, I realized that it was just the opening to an auto-parts store and I had to drive the van through the store in order to get to the washing bay. I drove through it, but at the end I found the entrance to a high school.

Sequence 2: While in the high school, I walked down to the dirt basement and found that someone had set up a flat screen TV and a wood-burning fireplace. The rest was all dirt. I wanted to watch a movie, but it was cold. I walked back upstairs and asked a teacher if I could borrow a grill lighter (so I could light the fireplace). He requested my student ID. Of course I didn't have one, so I fiddled through my wallet...pretending to be looking. In the meantime, someone handed me a pair of scissors. Since I couldn't find an ID, I walked back into the auto parts store with the scissors. In the store, there was a table where people could place anything that they had borrowed from the high school, and the store would return it for them. I placed the scissors on the table and left.

Sequence 3: After that, Andrea and I were parked on the street in front of my grandmother's old house. After a moment of sitting in the car, we noticed that some of her old neighbors were fighting in a car, not far from us. It looked violent and the woman was trying to get away from the guy. I walked up to their car and threatened the guy. I told him that everything he did was going to be videotaped by my wife (obviously a reference to our new camera). He then became quite aggravated and came after me. I was fearful that he was going to try to find Andrea and the camera, so I lead him away from our van and after a few minutes, I was able to calm him down and talk to him. He assured me that his behavior would improve.

Soon after that, I woke up.

Santa's hat

Typically, around this time of year, someone in your circle of influence is going to get the bright idea to spend a day wearing a Santa hat. Do them a favor, and remind them right away that though they think it's funny, you think it's tired.

Someone at the bank will have one on.
Someone at school will have one on.
A cashier at K-Mart will have one on.
Maybe even you will be tempted to wear one.

The best part is that everyone who dons one of these caps thinks they are the first person to ever do it. They walk around all day expecting people to say things like, "Well, someone has the Christmas spirit!" Or, "That thing is awesome, where did you get it...the North Pole... ha, ha, ha."

I have a better question for this year's wearers of the Santa hat, "Did you know that the red dye they used to make that thing came from a clubbed seal?" Even though that isn't even a little bit true, I think it might be a hoot if the question made them cry.

True stories from childhood - Vol. 4, "Trampoline"

Let me shoot strait with you. I'm not a Christmas person. I know that makes me seem evil, but I have good reason. I despise shopping, traffic, crabby attitudes from people who stress themselves out, etc. There.... I have vented.

My Father is not much of a shopper either. In fact, I would have to say that my favorite Christmas as a child revolved around the year he decided not to do any shopping whatsoever. My Dad decided to take us all to the mall, hand us each $100.00, and told us to get what we wanted. Some people might find that unappealing, but my two younger sisters and I loved it. We were given complete freedom to buy all the toys and gadgets that we had stared at for months in eager anticipation of receiving. I was ten, and believe it or not, I still have a lot of the stuff I bought in that shopping spree.

My youngest sister Stephanie thought it would be cool to buy a trampoline with some of her money. She found a very small one that cost about $15. We brought it back to my Dad's house and jumped on that little thing for hours.

Dad's basement had ceiling tiles. Our Stepmother told us to make certain that we didn't hit our heads off the ceiling while we were jumping, not because she was concerned about the ceiling, but because she didn't want us to break our heads. I guess that's reasonable. But when you're ten and an adult tells you not to do something, you immediately find yourself inexplicably tempted to do the very opposite. This was one such moment.

Being a bit of a show off, I said to my sisters, "Hey, watch. I'll hit my head off the ceiling ten times in a row without getting hurt." They watched and counted with me, "One, two, three, four, five..........smash!" I never made it to ten. Right around my sixth jump, my head smashed straight through one of the ceiling tiles. I knew I was in trouble, so I swore my sisters to secrecy and devised a plan that I hoped would work.

I brushed all the ceiling tile dust off my head and walked upstairs to the kitchen. I took a few paper towels and brought them back down with me, along with some scotch tape. I then placed one square over the new hole in the ceiling and taped it in place.

I kid you not, that piece of paper towel stayed taped to their ceiling for about three years, unnoticed. When they finally remodeled that part of the basement and noticed the disguised tile, they blamed it on the previous owners and laughed about it. I have never owned up to that deed, but I confess it here now in hopes of freeing my conscience from its burden of guilt.

Before using the camera......

A few evenings ago, I splurged and bought a new video camera. I have been looking for one for a month or so. We have an old Sharp Viewcam that I bought a bunch of years ago, but the video quality is seriously lacking. Being that we are expecting our new baby to arrive within the next two weeks, I figured that now would be the best time to update equipment.

I was hoping to find a video camera that didn't require tapes or dvd's as the recording medium, but rather some sort of perpetually reusable media stick or drive. I looked online, unsuccessfully. Then I made a trip to both Circuit City and Best Buy (I was leaning toward Circuit City anyway because they actually mention the word "Christmas" in their advertising).

Both stores carried the JVC Everio, a "Hard Disk Camcorder." The price at Circuit City, due to a sale and a 15% discount coupon, ended up being $150 less than Best Buy. I'm loving the camera. It's very tiny, yet it takes great video that will be no problem to edit on my computer and upload to the net if I so choose.

In the instruction manual, there is a section titled "Before Using this Camera." I made certain to read that first and this is what they recommend.....

When formatting or erasing data using the camera or PC functions, only the file administration information is changed. The data is not completely erased from the hard disk. If you want to completely erase all of the data, we recommend either using commercially available software that is specially designed for that purpose, or by physically destroying the camera with a hammer.

Really. Of course that's the first piece of advice you want to read before using your brand new, expensive video camera. Thanks for the head's up, JVC.

For a funny observation about labels, be sure to check out Erin Pavlick's blog. I laugh every time I read this post.

Waiter

According to Jay, my 3-year-old, here is the definition of a "waiter."

"A waiter is someone who waits patiently for the waitress to bring him his food."

Unsuspecting Video, "Push the Rock"

When a young man is employed by the Pocono Mountain Bible Conference, it is generally assumed that he is willing to accomplish some of the most ridiculous projects, while finding his labor strangely satisfying.

Pictured above are several guys from this summer's staff, rolling a large log down the street toward the camp entrance. Apparently, a car had hit a tree and the tree was cut down and left on the side of the road for most of the year. The car also took out a directional sign, which Andrew Hackman chose to use for the purpose of directing traffic. We decided that this nicely cut log would make a good addition to the seating area surrounding our bonfire pit.

It was also decided that since the staff is so good at pushing large objects that we would add a large rock (likely left over from a glacier) to our mini-golf course. Enjoy the unsuspecting video (and be glad that it is unlikely that we will try to move that rock again).

To view, you may need to download Quicktime to your computer. You may do so by clicking here.

Guy staff starring in "Push the Rock."