Crisis!

Forget the crisis in Iraq. Ignore the crisis in Ukraine. Put out of your mind the crisis of illegal immigrants flooding across our southern border. I'm talking about a REAL crisis with unimaginable consequences.

Yesterday my beer fridge died.

In preparation for the long 4th of July weekend it was stuffed to the gills with meat and beer - and suddenly it quit cooling.

We were faced with a genuine crisis.

My wife vetoed my first suggestion, which was to empty the kitchen refrigerator of non-essentials like fruit, vegetables, and milk and replace them with beer. She did, however, agree to go to the store and pick up several bags of ice. But that was just a temporary solution.

Phone calls to local appliance stores disclosed that the only models immediately available were expensive, top-of-the line ones. They were going for $2000-3000 each. Much as I like cold beer, that's too much.

Your basic no-frills refrigerators run around $500, but have to be ordered. Delivery time is 7-10 days.

In the meantime I had a big problem on my hands. The beer fridge contained about 40 pounds of meat (chicken beef, and sausage) along with several cases of beer. We had that much on hand because we have out of town guests, plus a couple of parties planned for this weekend.

There was only one thing to do.

I fired up the grill and began cooking all that meat. Simultaneously, I popped open a beer. The idea was that cooked meat keeps better than raw, and that the beer needed to be drunk before it got warm.

So as yesterday afternoon faded into evening I grilled and drank, drank and grilled, long into the night. As word of my plight spread amongst the neighbors several of them came over to help. By the end of the evening we had all the meat taken care of, and had put a serious dent in the beer.

I think everything is now at a manageable level. We can make do with periodic ice runs until the new beer fridge arrives.

The beer fridge is dead. Long live the beer fridge!