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September 23, 2002
mark thomas I start each day with a pot of coffee and a huge glass of ice water. I like my ice, oh yes I do. A few months ago I went shopping for those old-style metal or aluminum ice cube trays, unaware that no one makes them any more. I went to Crate and Barrel, Williams-Sonoma, and Blooomingdales, among other places. Not one of these places had a single ice cube tray of any kind, and boy did I got some strange looks when I asked the clerks for this item. I looked for a Lechter's housewares store, but the only Lechter's I ever went to had been replaced by a Victoria's Secret store. I should have gone in and asked the Victoria's Secret people for ice cube trays. The only ice cube trays I could find in stores were at places like Walgreen's, and they only had the cheap plastic kind of trays that go for about 50 cents apiece. But I wanted the metal kind. I wanted the visceral satisfaction of grabbing the lever and breaking the ice out of the tray. I went to EBAY and discovered that there are plenty of my precious metal ice cube trays for sale at any given time. Now I have a whole collection, and in fact I just bought 2 more gold-colored trays that should be mailed to my P.O. box within the next couple of weeks. My freezer is not very good, unfortunately. If too much stuff is in it, ice doesn't freeze very well, or else it takes 2 or 3 days to freeze. This is especially true during the summer, or when it's hot outside. A repair guy came over once and replaced all the lining on the freezer and refrigerator doors, but it doesn't seem to have made a difference. I think the deal is that the electric company reduces electrical current during the summer. I have evidence for this, too. I plugged a camcorder into an electrical outlet and the battery indicator was at half. If I unplugged it and ran it on the battery, the battery indicator was at full. And my Radio Shack battery recharger, which usually takes no longer than 2 hours to charge a set of 4 NiMH batteries, takes all day to charge those batteries during the summer. But what do I know. I'm just a lowly consumer of electricity. Sometimes, when a conversation is going nowhere, I say "Didn't Con Edison do a fabulous job of supplying our electricity today?" And generally, the conversation continues going nowhere from that point. « Precipice • sorabji.com • A Beautiful Day »
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