Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with freezing

Ground Beef for dummies

sunshinesky — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:59:44 -0800

IsitstillgoodFilter: Ground Beef Edition. So normally I'm pretty brave about these things, and I understand that nothing goes bad at the stroke of midnight.... but I noticed today that my family-pack of ground beef which I bought on Monday has a 'best-before of yesterday. It has browned a little from its original bright red dye colour, and that's what squicks me out. I had initially planned on separating and freezing it into 4 bags of single pounds, but I'm afraid that I'll be pushing it if I freeze it today and then thaw for a day as needed.

Should I be worried about it? Can I mitigate my fears by just making sure I cook it extra well when I do end up using it? I don't intend to make anything too rare with it... it's for stuff like taco-night and hamburgers and pasta sauce.

Please hope me!

Help me wrap and present delicious but frozen food.

anderjen — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:24:16 -0800

This Christmas, I'm giving everyone the gift of delicious and healthy home-cooked meals, but I'm blanking on how to wrap and/or present them at the Christmas Eve festivities. Everything will be pre-frozen, which probably rules out putting them by the tree with the other gifts, and the only other solution I can think of is leaving them in my car and letting everyone take theirs on the way home, which is lame. There must be a better way. As I'm picturing it, everything will be frozen and packaged into reusable Gladware-type containers. Once frozen, are there any cheap ways of keeping them cold and dry to the point where I could actually wrap them and set them under the tree for a few hours until we get to the gift opening, and then again until people can get them home? I don't want anything to defrost too much, obviously.

The one thing I really do not want to do is buy each recipient a mini-cooler and ice packs because that kind of defeats the purpose of a low-cost/all-consumable present in my mind, and also there are 10 people, which would blow my budget.

If I do have to leave them in the car (which is a viable option, as I live in Minnesota), any cool ideas on what I could use or make to represent the meals for maximum effect? The rest of the gift will consist of other homemade treats and snacks, so there will be something open for sure, but the main meal is kind of the piece de resistance, so I'd like to make sure it doesn't get missed in a pile of wrapping paper.

I am certainly open to better ideas and suggestions if you have any. Thanks, all!

Cooking Gurus: Educate me in the way of the freezer

Bunglegirl — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:17:35 -0800

I want to pre-make most of my meals ahead of time. How do I store them in individual servings? I tend to forget to cook dinner until its really late and then end up making something boring and starchy like plain pasta but I crave variety—if I could eat five kinds of tiny appetizers for every meal I would be happy. Also, I would like to eat more balanced, healthy meals so I plan to pre-cook meals and freeze them. I should have the time to steam some veggies but the rest is a problem. If I wait until 9pm I'll be lucky if I cook any meat/protein at all. What has me stumped is what do I freeze it in?

1. Baked goods:
I understand that I can throw bread, muffins and baked goods in a freezer bag. In my experience, no matter what, those bags let in little ice crystals. Is that so horrible? If so, how do I stop that from happening?

2. Soup, chili, curry:
What do I put liquids in and how do I defrost/reheat it? I'm a bit concerned about Tupperware and other plastics and the way that they can leech into food. I also prefer to reuse containers and not be wasteful so I use glass containers for leftovers. If I put a liquid into a bag how would I reheat it? Do small (individual portion) freezer bags exist, can I use sandwich bags or am I forced to reheat large quantities each time I want a meal?

3. Casseroles, combined dishes, lasagna:
Can this sort of thing be frozen? Do I cut a portion, wrap it in saran wrap and then foil?

I have three glass Tupperware containers with plastic lids that have suited me fine for leftovers up to now so I will probably need to buy supplies. What do you recommend?

I've read a few threads about freezing food (like this and this) but nothing is very specific about what to freeze different things in for individual portions. Perhaps this seems like a basic thing to know but my mother always cooked fresh food (for 5) so I never learned this sort of thing. Bonus points for freezing & pre-cooking dos/don't or recipes.

Professional panic filter

Anonymous — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:33:15 -0800

I had a potentially damaging lapse of ability at work today and need some advice on how to keep it from happening ever again. I consider myself a very decent public speaker, especially when well-prepared and rehearsed. But once every few years, when I am asked to speak extemporaneously in a pubilc venue, I lose it. My brain just freezes, my heart begins to race, I run quickly out of breath, and I can’t think of what I want to say, even when the topic is something I know well and discuss every day. Once my mind realizes this is going to happen, the situation snowballs and becomes worse and worse by the second.

This happened to me today on a thirty-person conference call, when asked a really simple question (by someone important at work) about something that I know intimately. It was so bad that I stumbled and fumbled and ultimately had to say, "I can't speak right now."

I have tried strategies like asking a clarifying question to give me time to recover, but it doesn’t always work; and frankly, there are some situations where it's hard or inappropriate to ask a clarifying question. Similarly, I can't have talking points with me all the time, about every possible topic.

To reiterate: This is a rare thing, and only seems to happen when I have not been expecting to speak in public and someone points to me and says ‘go!.’ At the same time, it has occurred a few times in pretty high-stakes situations, and it does not do me any favors, professionally.

What can I do to make sure these incidents don’t happen again?

Help us eat for the winter!

puckish — Sun, 31 May 2009 05:36:24 -0800

We want to freeze vegetables for the winter. Here's the trick: we don't want to use a refrigerator. So, after a summer of vegetable gardening, we're going to have a ton of produce that we'd like to put up. Not much space in the kitchen, so we're trying to think of "off the grid" ways of freezing vegetables until the winter. Specifically, ways that don't use electricity... Maybe this is a little bit crazy? Here are some of the things we've come up with so far....

- Bury the ice-box -- basically, digging a small hole in the ground, lining it with wood spacers, and creating a mini-icebox that we can access through a trap door. In the summer we'd have to keep it stocked with ice; in the winter it should keep on its own. Downside: Drainage? If we're OK with ice melting, is this going to be a huge mud problem, or will it drain effectively on its own? What are good ways to line / seal something like this?

- Freezing with liquid nitrogen - this gets around the initial "no-fridge" policy, but space is still an issue. (one of my roommates is REALLY excited about this idea). Plus side: no need to buy ice! But is this going to be a logistical nightmare? Downside: Storage is still an issue, obviously.

- Chest freezer in the backyard and just turning it off in December (when stuff gets cold enough to keep on its own). We could also do this in the basement (though it's not technically our space). Upside: No problems with insulation. Downside: It's a refrigerator.

I'm excited about number 1 (buried home icebox), and potentially number 2 (in conjunction with number 1). We're also going to be doing a lot of canning / preservation, but we'd like to have fresh veggies on hand too. Ideally, we want an outdoor setup, so things will just keep naturally once it gets cold.

Ideas?

iPod/iTunes freezing on song transfer

tremspeed — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:32:26 -0800

Newish iPod freezing during transfer from computer. Also HDScan not appearing in the diagnostics. Anything (additional) I should try before taking advantage of the service plan? I got my girlfriend a 120GB Ipod Classic for her birthday 2 months ago. She's just acquired an external hard drive to use for her itunes library, and in the process of transferring the 80 GB (or so) library from the external drive to her iPod, there was a couple freezes that basically locked up itunes until a hard reset (or as we discovered, unplugging the ipod). The transfer would be going at a pretty normal clip, slow down drastically, and eventually stick on one file.

My first thought was that this was a problem with trying to automatically sync a Firewire external HD with the USB ipod. We reconfigured iTunes to use a 'test library' located on the internal HD with the same results. Also we tried just copying the offending song- that is, what it was transferring when it froze. The song transferred fine on a fresh drive.

Googling the problem came up with a check you can try with the iPod's built in config program, we tried that, but under I/O setup or whatever it is, there's supposed to be 4 options, including HDScan. It's not there, and there's only 2 options to try. Poking around, there seems to be no other option to scan the drive. Running OSX's Disk Utility on both the iPod drive and the internal HD Verify'ed both drives.

Alright so, just to rule out the computer, internal HD, and any corrupt mp3 files, we plugged in my iPhone and synced with her computer. The transfer went fine, not stopping where (in the library) previous transfers halted, and transferring just fine 2 of the songs that it got stuck on during previous attempts.

So, I'm thinking it's a glitch on the iPod's drive, a bad sector or something. I have the extended warranty from Best Buy, cause shit happens, so aside from having to explain all of this again, we should be good. Is there anything else I should try before giving in? Thanks!

How long does it take to freeze vodka, and what cool things can I do with it?

jaffacakerhubarb — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 04:13:13 -0800

How long does it take to freeze vodka, and what can I do with it after that? I've got a bottle of vodka here that I want to freeze — now, I know that vodka doesn't freeze in the conventional sense, but how long do I need to leave it in the freezer for before it goes as cold as it's going to get? It's a 70cl, 40% bottle of Ketel One, if that makes any difference. The freezer is a regular domestic one.

Then, once it's frozen, what can I do with it? I've got a carton of orange juice, which was my main plan, but if anyone has any smart ideas I'm all ears... I've heard of people getting coloured/fruit flavoured vodka with skittles, I guess that's the sort of thing I mean, any other ideas are fine.

Cold Curves

blue_wardrobe — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 08:18:55 -0800

The heater in my 95 G20 is suddenly working intermittently. For the last three days, I get cold air through the vents for the first 20 minutes of highway driving, followed by the heat suddenly kicking in. Then, when I corner around a sharp right hand turn, the air suddenly goes cold, and then heat resumes when I straighten up. Ideas before I head to the mechanic?

Will the cold kill my hard drive?

valleys — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 12:07:42 -0800

Will 20 minutes at -20 kill my external hard drive? I have a Maxtor external hard drive that I use both at work and home. On occasion I have to walk to/from work, which takes about 20 minutes. It's cold here ... it'll be -20C when I leave this evening.

a) Is the cold bad for it in general? While I drive or get a ride whenever I can, there are days when walking is unavoidable. Am I better to leave it at work and pick it up next time I have the car?

b) If I leave it to warm up before using, will it be ok? Walking home it's not much of an issue as I don't usually use it until the next day.

c) However ... What about days when I have to walk to work and need to use it relatively soon after arriving? Will 20 minutes at room temperature be enough to let it warm up?

d) I typically carry it in my backpack where it is obviously exposed to the cold. I've considered carrying it in an inside coat pocket but am concerned the moisture from perspiration would be worse for it than the cold.

What to do with all this bacon

billysumday — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 09:01:39 -0800

What's the best way to freeze bacon? Or should I just leave it in the fridge? So, just got back from Sam's Club where I splurged and bought the box of bacon. There are four 1-pound packs in the box. Now, the thing is, okay, see, I eat bacon. In fact I love the stuff. But there's just no way I'm going to be able to get through the stuff in less than a month - at the earliest. So, can I stick three of the packs in the freezer? I'm worried that the bacon will expand while freezing and break the tightly sealed plastic wrap. Also worried about how it will affect taste. I can always put some bacon in ziploc baggies to give them some extra room. That would help also in rationing out more appropriately sized servings of bacon, which I could then thaw and enjoy when desired.

However, this may be a moot point if bacon lasts essentially forever in its sealed package in the fridge. I don't know exactly what the shelf life is on sealed bacon, but I'm assuming it's pretty long.

Lastly, perhaps it would be wiser still to just make something with all four pounds of the bacon and then work on preserving that. The original idea was to make chocolate covered bacon with my new double-boiler, but the Sam's Club bacon is too thin, so it's off to the store to get thick cut bacon for the explicit purpose of making some delicious piggy confections. That means I've still got a lot of leftover bacon to make soup, bacon bread, bacon salad, bacon whatever.

Mmmmmm - bacon! Any ideas are welcome. Thanks, mefiers.

Will my spigots freeze?

roaring beast — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:24:41 -0800

Do I need to wrap my outdoor spigots to prevent freezing? We are experiencing our first few days of freezing temps. I was always told to wrap up the outdoor spigots so they wouldn't freeze. However, since the wraps will be the same temp as the air, I can't see how this would help very much. I have already disconnected the garden hoses. House is about 25 years old, on a slab (no basement/crawlspace). Is there anything I need to do?

Previously

Preventing frozen pipes

lisa g — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 20:34:12 -0800

Preventing my house's pipes from freezing while a few timezones away? Suppose I live in a city where it rarely freezes (say, Portland, Oregon), yet it's predicted that we'll soon have three+ days of subfreezing temps (as in, not even rising above 32). Yet I'm out of town now, and will be for all the drama.

I'm worried about the pipes in our 100-year-old house. We have lots of stuff in the basement. I have a friend with a key. Should I ask her to:

1.) leave a slow drip from all the faucets & the shower? The two outdoor faucets too?

or

2.) shut off our water valve completely, and run out as much water as possible from all our faucets?

Or something else?

We left the thermostat at 50, for what that's worth.

Thanks in advance!

Frozen ratsicles, anyone?

Olden_Bittermann — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:57:13 -0800

I've been searching Metafilter for humane solutions to our rat problem and, while a couple sound promising (hmmm...so lighter fluid is really ether??), I haven't seen one possibility mentioned: sticking the little bastards in the freezer. I've tried it, and it works great. For some reason, though, my wife isn't too thrilled at the prospect of Brother Rat nestling, even briefly, next to the frozen peas. What do you think? First of all, before anyone proposes other solutions, let me emphasize "humanely" -- I know they're loathsome little vermin, but then again, so are a lot of CEOs and lame-duck politicians, and I don't want to head down that particular slippery slope. Way I look at it, our rodent brethren are just trying to make a living like the rest of us... plus, I feel a terrible hypocrite snaring them in a trap called "Hav-a-Hart" only to plunge them into the Icy Waters of Slow Death, which is what I had been doing. (It was the process of elimination: can't release them within 5 miles of another habitation or they just become someone else's problem--and I'd have to drive 100 miles round trip to get that far out in the country--plus they've figured out, swear to God, some way to snatch the bait out of spring traps! As for poison, from all indications the use of it just breeds generations of super rats as resistant to Warfarin as the latest strains of staph are to penicillin)

So, lately, I've been spraying them with water, wrapping the cage in several layers of garbage bags, then sticking the whole package in the freezer. Very effective. But as mentioned above, my wife isn't too wild about the idea, so I do what any other loving husband would do: I wait until she's goes off to work at night, then take them out before she gets home.

Anyway -- finally -- here are my questions: How reasonable do you find my wife's objections, and, in your opinion, how "humane" is death by freezing? I've heard that those who came close to it describe it as a fairly peaceful process...

Freezer food.

backseatpilot — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:27:30 -0800

I would like some recipes or meal ideas that, when cooked, will last for a long time. Lately (mostly because my fridge is usually empty) I've been looking for food ideas that will keep for awhile. I'm getting a little tired of making one or two dishes and eating them for an entire week. I'd like to have maybe a dozen different things stocked in my freezer/refrigerator that I can pick from and reheat.

So the question is - what foods can I cook a whole lot of that will freeze well or keep in the refrigerator well for quite a long time? "Long time" being over a month or two. I eat just about anything, so throw me your best of everything. I already have tomato sauce, chili, and soups down, though.

Death of a laptop

Iteki — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:43:13 -0800

Laptop is giving up the ghost. Ram? HD? Videocard? Full explaination of symptoms inside, help me get it at least to a place where I can back it up. Fujitsu-Siemens E7010 with two 256 ramsticks and every Popcap and Real Arcade game ever released just got seriously hinkey. Excuse the length, want to get all details I can think of in.

Other than running hot and slow forever we have experienced no pre-fail symptoms like freezing, crashing, etc. Last night the machine froze, and the screen flimmered at a very high frequencty. Unreactive, we shut it down by holding the powerbutton. Gave it a minute and restarted. Not a peep visually, and no particular startup sounds (disk activity, CD engaging etc) but the fans and screen backlight did go on.

This morning, having given the ramsticks a bit of a push to check they are seated properly I booted up. Got the bootscreen and was given the warning that it hadn't started properly last. Continued and it froze before getting any further. Shut it down and tried a while later. Got it to safe-boot, couldn't find the external HD, and tried a full boot. All well and good, but then it froze again and did the screen-flimmer.
Starting 'er up again gave me no boot screen, just fans and backlight.

I don't want to stress the computer out by trying too many different things, I am a little worried it might be the HD (but no clicking or banging). The only real two things I can think of right now are to check the ramsticks, trying them one at a time in each of the sockets, and otherwise to try hook up the HD to a desktop for backup. Ideally I want to squeeze a few more months out of this baby, so ideally it's the ram and I can just buy new stuff.

Thanks for bearing with me, little help?
(on preview, no POST beeps)

Best way to reheat!

Gideon — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 15:07:31 -0800

Help! I'm cooking a rather large batch of baked chicken tonight, but there are only two of us and I'm wanting to save the leftovers for later. What's the best way to do so? I'm cooking a fancy baked chicken dish and I want to overcook so we have more later in the week. However, I'm not sure how to best reheat the food so it is still palatable.

Microwaving is out - I've never had microwaved meat come out decent. And my microwave can't even manage bacon.

So what do I do? I can freeze or refrigerate it to save it, but what's the best way to reheat the chicken so it'll still taste good? Oven? How long and at what temperature?

This is the recipe I'm using, btw.

Is my Wii terminally ill?

yodelingisfun — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:18:55 -0800

My fairly new Wii has started to act all weird. I play the Lego Star Wars pretty compulsively these days and suddenly yesterday it just froze. Nothing I did unfroze it and I had to turn off the Wii and when it restarted I had lost all my progress. It then happen a few more times and the graphics became all jumpy. I got the Wii for my birthday in January but I think the bf actually purchased it in November. We don't have it hooked up to the internet. Is it maybe over-heating? Is it broken and can I get it fixed? Is it a known problem with a solution (please please please) I really NEED my Star Wars!

Stop my sump pump pipe from creating a fountain of ice next to my house

saffry — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:43:30 -0800

How can I repair my sump pump drainage pipes so that they'll withstand sub-freezing temperatures? I live in an area that apparently has a high water table, and I think I have an underground spring close to my home too. Which means the sump pump in my basement has been running 24/7 for the last few weeks as we've gotten snow and thaws. Yesterday, I discovered that the PVC pipe had burst right after it exits from the house and before it goes underground. I'm getting a spectacular build-up of ice there from the water gushing out of the basement. What can I do?

I'd repaired part of this pipe system in the spring, but I don't think the bonding glue will work in sub-freezing temperatures. I also don't want to shut the pump off for any length of time. But I hate having all this ice build up right next to the house, and I'm worried that having the water build-up there will cause some to leak back into the basement.

Clearly, when spring comes, I have to dig a deeper ditch and lay new pipe. But what steps can I take to keep it from cracking again, especially in the area that is exposed as it leaves the house? And what can I do now to divert the water further from the house?

Stay with me?

srboisvert — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 13:15:08 -0800

Is there any reason why people need to stay awake to avoid freezing? I've seen this over and over in movie and tv plots where one person tries to keep another awake.

Help my ailing iBook!

annabellee — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 06:35:26 -0800

MacTechFilter: Is this strange activity in my console log the reason my iBook is freezing up? I posted a few weeks ago about my iBook G4 freezing at seemingly random moments and not responding to anything but a hard restart.

Original question here: http://ask.metafilter.com/72204/How-to-get-iBook-G4-to-stop-freezing-up
(There's no option to hyperlink or format in this text field for some reason)

As advised in the responses, I checked my console.log and system.log files right after it froze this morning and found in my system log:

Oct 20 08:48:23 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: ** ASIC Hang Log Start **

followed by about 1000 lines that look like this:

Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: ** ASIC Hang Log Start **
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x01005c63 4f000217 00000007 00000003
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x02007c43 c0001c04 00000002 00000008
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x00004443 01e1f8b7 00003b3b 80010140
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x4000ffff 001e0000 51b3a220 72001005
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x080a0f00 00000000 040100f8 80000003
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0x0008bbbb 00000002
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 0:0x0021e110
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 1:0x80000000
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 2:0x000101ce
Oct 20 08:48:23 iBookG4 kernel[0]: 3:0x10264600

The numbers before the colon go up to 1023 each time.

These are the final lines before the time at which I restart the computer:

Oct 20 08:48:33 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: 1023:0xffffffff
Oct 20 08:48:33 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: 0x5d56f250
Oct 20 08:48:33 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: ** ASIC Hang Log End **
Oct 20 08:48:33 iBook-G4 kernel[0]: ATIRadeon::submit_buffer: Overflowed block waiting for FIFO space. Have 5, need 6. RBBM_STATUS 0x80010140. VAP_CNTL_STATUS 0x00000002
Oct 20 08:49:26 localhost kernel[0]: standard timeslicing quantum is 10000 us

Entering ** ASIC Hang Log Start ** and ** ASIC Hang Log End ** in Google give me only people who had this problem with eMacs, mostly several years ago.

Can anyone help?

How to get iBook G4 to stop freezing up.

annabellee — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 10:39:36 -0800

[iBook G4 filter]: My Mac keeps freezing and responds to nothing but a hard restart. About two and a half weeks ago, my iBook started freezing randomly. The keyboard stops working totally and the only thing I can do is move the mouse pointer with the trackpad (can't highlight anything, can't get hidden dock to show). Sometimes I get a spinning beachball for a second but usually it just shows an arrow cursor. The only way I've been able to get it to work again is with a hard restart (pressing the power button).

Lately I've noticed the I can count on it freezing up when I unplug the power cord, plug in the power cord, or unplug the speakers. It still freezes at other times, but this is a guaranteed way to make it happen.

I've done extensive Googling on OS X boards to try and find help.
I have run: Disk Utility to repair permissions; started in single user mode and gotten a clean bill of health from Disk Utility, installed and run Cocktail (which seems to just clean caches), installed and run Applejack AUTO. All give me a "nothing's wrong" report at the end.

I do NOT have my Tiger disk (Grrr, misplaced) so I'm trying to avoid the "nuke and pave" option if I can attribute the freezing to a software issue/repair the hardware myself.

Vital stats: iBook G4, purchased 1/2004, running OS 10.4.10, 1GHz PowerPC, 640MB DDR SDRAM. Approximately 12 GB free on 60GB hard drive. Applecare expired. Running Tiger for a year with no problems. Most memory-intensive programs used regularly: Quicksilver, Firefox. My battery is not eligible for the replacement program.

Please help! Happy to answer any further questions if needed.

Help our workspace be not-so-freezing!

kmtiszen — Thu, 10 May 2007 09:36:17 -0800

FreezingOfficeFilter: Are there any minimum temperature requirement laws for US office spaces? Just relocated to a new office space that seems to be the hub of air-conditioner activity. It's absolutely freezing. A numbness in the fingers kind of cold. There are four other people in the area that feel the same way. There are plenty of other sections and workers on the same floor who are experiencing fairly normal office temperatures; it's just our specific little nook that's especially unbearable.

We contacted the office facilities manager and he said there was nothing he could do and we should just bring jackets and sweaters to work. This response was not acceptable to me or my colleagues, so we're just wondering whether there are any legal limits on office temperature. Please note that we're dealing with a smaller division of a major, major national corporation here.

I'm wearing a sweater right now, but my fingers are frigid and we're all still shivering in our boots. Please help us alleviate our discomfort!

Does freezing adversely effect soft contact lenses?

Coffeemate — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 06:14:11 -0800

Does freezing adversely effect soft contact lenses? My boyfriend wears CooperVision Encore Premium lenses. He ordered two boxes which were delivered to our home in Minnesota yesterday. They sat outside for about 12 hours and when we brought them in, they were frozen. Are they still OK to wear? Would the water content in the lenses themselves cause the lenses to be damaged?
After thawing overnight things look fine, but we haven't examined an actual lens. Should these just be returned, or will they be OK?

my health club is a health risk. what should I do?

krautland — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 18:01:07 -0800

my health club is a health risk. what should I do? temperatures have dropped in chicago. we reached minus three degrees fahrenheit last night. good thing that I have a membership to an indoor health club. or not.

it's so cold in there that I could actually see my breath when I last ran there. after that, I promptly fell sick and missed a week at work. my emails to the health club manager have gone unanswered, the front desk personnel claims there is nothing they can do and the manager's voice mail didn't pick up last time I tried.

I think those gigantic panorama windows are to blame. you can practically feel the icy wind seeping through the cracks. there is no isolation on them whatsoever.

I wonder what I should do. of course I could join another club but this one is by far the closest and thus the most convenient. but it does seem that I need to go to an outside source and make a big stinker out of this in order to get them to move. so what do you recommend, hive mind? alderman, better business bureau or (gasp) an attorney (I did fall sick after all)?

pearls in the freezer, i know i know - it's ludicrous

luriete — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 14:56:17 -0800

Will pearls - regular, black and other types, both freshwater and non - be damaged by freezing for extended periods of time? We're not talking deep-freeze, just the temperature (or range of temperatures) in your average home kitchen freezer.