Baruch the Alrightnik
Dec. 10th, 2025 07:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
baroque_mongooseI woke up stupidly early this morning, and didn't quite realise how early till I got into the kitchen and saw the digital clock; there's an analogue one in my bedroom, but clearly not all of my brain was awake enough to register where the hands were pointing. It feels weird but it won't hurt. I am sleeping incredibly well with my feet raised, so much so that I plan to make it standard practice; so waking up early is probably just the result of not waking up in the middle of the night.
Anyway, I'm not right, but I think I am at any rate better than yesterday and I'll take that. At the moment I'm trying to up the salt and liquid with the aid of a 500 ml Moon flask full of hot Marigold stock, which I am sipping very slowly at intervals; that way I hope to absorb more than if I just glugged something down quickly.
This morning I'm going to introduce you to Baruch the Alrightnik. Baruch is my fridge-freezer, and he is so called because he's Jewish. I know he's Jewish because he has a Sabbath mode; I can't recall what that does, but I think it disables certain non-essential functions on the Sabbath. He should be quite happy in my house, because I'm a vegan, and most vegan stuff is automatically kosher (not all of it, apparently; there may be issues with things like fermentation, but I never put anything like that in Baruch anyway).
But why is he an Alrightnik? Well, "alrightnik" is a wonderfully expressive Yiddish term for someone who, shall we say, relies too much on their money and isn't inclined to share it around - the sort of person for whom the phrase "I'm all right, Jack" was invented. If someone calls you an alrightnik, it's really not a compliment. And Baruch, while not being a literal miser, is definitely posh, and does have a decidedly entitled attitude.
I didn't know he was quite so posh when I bought him. I bought him in a massive hurry because his predecessor had just, um, predeceased, and obviously I needed a fridge-freezer. The main thing I wanted was more freezer capacity than the last one, and Baruch had that in spades without taking up appreciable extra floor space (he's a fair bit taller). He's a Liebherr, which I knew was a good brand, and I got him at a discount, so I was happy.
Nobody thought to tell me he had a carbon filter.
I've never had one with a carbon filter before, so I was very taken aback when, about six months after I bought him, he beeped angrily at me. I consulted the manual to see why he was beeping, and it turned out that he wanted his filter replacing. So I located and extracted the old filter (a 3 - 4 cm square of black plastic, not very thick, containing carbon granules), and then went online to check the price of replacements. As you do.
I was quoted £25. I had to look twice; I'd expect to pay that for a box of ten or a dozen of the things. Nope. That was for one filter. It didn't take a maths degree to work out that if Baruch lasted anywhere near as long as his predecessor had done, I'd have ended up paying out more on filters than I did to buy him in the first place.
So I ordered a bag of aquarium carbon filter pellets. And now, every time he beeps, I prise the filter apart with a pair of compasses or similar implement, tip out the old carbon pellets, pop in a new layer, clip it back together again, and stick it back into Baruch. He's happy, and so am I.
Someone, somewhere, is making an absolute killing out of those filters. But not from me!
Anyway, I'm not right, but I think I am at any rate better than yesterday and I'll take that. At the moment I'm trying to up the salt and liquid with the aid of a 500 ml Moon flask full of hot Marigold stock, which I am sipping very slowly at intervals; that way I hope to absorb more than if I just glugged something down quickly.
This morning I'm going to introduce you to Baruch the Alrightnik. Baruch is my fridge-freezer, and he is so called because he's Jewish. I know he's Jewish because he has a Sabbath mode; I can't recall what that does, but I think it disables certain non-essential functions on the Sabbath. He should be quite happy in my house, because I'm a vegan, and most vegan stuff is automatically kosher (not all of it, apparently; there may be issues with things like fermentation, but I never put anything like that in Baruch anyway).
But why is he an Alrightnik? Well, "alrightnik" is a wonderfully expressive Yiddish term for someone who, shall we say, relies too much on their money and isn't inclined to share it around - the sort of person for whom the phrase "I'm all right, Jack" was invented. If someone calls you an alrightnik, it's really not a compliment. And Baruch, while not being a literal miser, is definitely posh, and does have a decidedly entitled attitude.
I didn't know he was quite so posh when I bought him. I bought him in a massive hurry because his predecessor had just, um, predeceased, and obviously I needed a fridge-freezer. The main thing I wanted was more freezer capacity than the last one, and Baruch had that in spades without taking up appreciable extra floor space (he's a fair bit taller). He's a Liebherr, which I knew was a good brand, and I got him at a discount, so I was happy.
Nobody thought to tell me he had a carbon filter.
I've never had one with a carbon filter before, so I was very taken aback when, about six months after I bought him, he beeped angrily at me. I consulted the manual to see why he was beeping, and it turned out that he wanted his filter replacing. So I located and extracted the old filter (a 3 - 4 cm square of black plastic, not very thick, containing carbon granules), and then went online to check the price of replacements. As you do.
I was quoted £25. I had to look twice; I'd expect to pay that for a box of ten or a dozen of the things. Nope. That was for one filter. It didn't take a maths degree to work out that if Baruch lasted anywhere near as long as his predecessor had done, I'd have ended up paying out more on filters than I did to buy him in the first place.
So I ordered a bag of aquarium carbon filter pellets. And now, every time he beeps, I prise the filter apart with a pair of compasses or similar implement, tip out the old carbon pellets, pop in a new layer, clip it back together again, and stick it back into Baruch. He's happy, and so am I.
Someone, somewhere, is making an absolute killing out of those filters. But not from me!
