bwahahahahaha!

so, get this:

apparently, the broken fridge in my house was made in April 2005. the repair man who came today said that there's nothing wrong outside of the "sealed area" so it must be in there. he didn't open it because it would void our warranty if we have one. he was very nice and charged us twenty bucks instead of $55 because it only took him ten minutes.

I get the model number and serial number from Matt and call the nice people at GE. They said that there's a five year warranty on the sealed area--and that if that's the problem it'll cover all of the costs.

and since the repair dude said that's likely the problem, the odds are good that the GE man is going to come on Tuesday and fix our fridge (or tell us when/how they'll fix it) for free and we'll still have a $500 lowes gift card in our hot little hands.

this.
is.
excellent.

and? this is how I can manage to trudge through the unpleasant part. if all goes as planned I win two times over!