Tuesday, May 29, 2007

What do you really, really not want to break down when you're away for the weekend?

Apologies for the absence. I’m blaming ongoing work PC issues, combined with being a bit of a social butterfly at the moment, so I’ve not been home much in the evenings.

As compensation, I have a great “Jacki’s an idiot” story for you all.

So, as you may have read, I was away all weekend in Canberra getting up to lots of fun girly family shenanigans. I arrived home Sunday evening and headed out again pretty much straight away to go see not-the-boy. This was followed by arriving back home later, totally exhausted, and heading pretty much straight to bed.

Yesterday morning I got up to get ready for work, and started making a cup of tea. After going through the usual motions of boiling the kettle, emptying the teapot and making the tea, I returned once it had had a chance to steep for a few minutes to do the pouring.

At this point I noticed that the milk wasn’t cold. A quick sniff confirmed that “yoghurt” would be a far more accurate description of the contents of the carton.

With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I warily checked the fridge. It was as warm in there as the rest of the apartment, and the state of my vegetables confirmed that it probably hadn’t been cold in there for a couple of days. Aargh! The fridge is definitely the one appliance in the house that you don’t want to have break on you and left for a couple of days.

So, being the organiser that I am, I did the following:
I looked up the number of my appliance repair guy (it was on a magnet on the fridge, so it wasn’t too tricky to find) and gave him a call. He agreed to come out mid-morning.
I called my boss to organise coming in a couple of hours late. She suggested that if the fridge was completely dead it would probably be covered by my contents insurance.
I called my insurance company to check that it was covered and received instructions on what I would need to do and what I would need from the repairman if the fridge was fried.
I dashed to my local supermarket. Picked up milk (I did finally manage that cup of tea) a couple of things to eat, and a bag of ice.
Went back home and filled the esky with ice and then the contents of my shopping.
Completed the stomach-churning job of cleaning out my fridge. I think the less said about that particular task the better.

Finally the repair guy arrived. He briefly admired my new dishwasher (advising me on giving up on the old one and giving me excellent advice on the choice and maintenance of the new one was his last job for me) and then set to the task of having a look at my fridge.

He opened the door, and noted that it wasn’t working at all, even the light. Apparently it’s unusual for the light and the engine to fail at the same time. Time to check the power point. I grabbed a hairdryer (it’s not like it’s been used for anything else much lately) and gave it a try.

Nothing.

OK, apparently the next thing to do was to check the fuse box.

As I’m in an apartment, my fuse box is in my hall storage cupboard. I opened the door and it was immediately clear what the problem was – two of the fuse switches were flicked to the “off” position.

I scratched my head and puzzled for a minute and then looked upwards. On the shelf above the fuse box was the travel bag I had just replaced that morning after using it as my luggage from my weekend away.

Best I can figure, when I started packing last Thursday night, I caught the switches with one of the straps on my bag as I took it down off the shelf.

So the good news is that my fridge is fine.

The bad news is that I’m an idiot.

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