Journalist Cleans 'Fridge; Discovers New Species; Science Abuzz

Fat-assed editr cleans 'fridge.

So here I am this morning, awaiting some phone calls for a couple of magazine articles I'm doing and I get this bug up my butt to do something creative--like clean out the 'fridge, which hasn't been closely inspected since, say, before Thanksgiving.

There's a lot of stuff in there, so much that I can't get last night's leftovers in and I have to throw them away. My mama, bless her soul, would roll in her grave in order to position herself to kill me if she knew. The Smith family did not waste food because it was a precious and rare comodity.

Anyhow, I meditate for a few minutes to get rid of the pre-cleaning butterflies, bow up my neck the way my football coach taught me and go into full attack mode. I quickly uncover the missing container of lentil soup that I made for Christmas. It has a gray film on top I don't recall being part of it. Delightful smell upon opening the plastic bowl.

Then, I get three moss-covered chili servings, some baked beans with little things moving around, something I simply can't identify (it's orange and white; Go Vols!), what appears to have been chicken at one time (generic chicken, as in, "you know, it tastes like chicken"), and at the bottom of the top shelf some dried honey-like whatever. I don't eat honey 'cause of the diabetes thingy, so I have no idea what it is. My little handy-dandy scraper and some very hot water takes the sticky off and I smell it. Not bad, but do I dare put it to the taste test? No, probably not.

After working my way all the way through and coming to the conclusion that complete echo systems can evolve in a few months, I identify not one, not two, but three complete new species. Not sure if they're plant or animal, but one of the boys at Tech can help with this, I think.

Such an adventure, this refrigerator cleaning thing. One 50-pound plastic bag of old food to the trash (those baggies are toughies) and 73 empty plastic containers to wash. When I restore what is still edible to the 'fridge I come to the inevitable conclusion: I need to get my fat butt to Kroger to replenish my supply.

(Drawing: voodooboutique.typepad.com)