Good grief! Someone say it ain’t so…
Yesterday I spent the whole damn day batting from pillar to post, trying to repair one of the antique lamps that grace the bedroom. It flickers after it’s been on for awhile, suggesting it needs some rewiring. No, a new light bulb doesn’t fix the problem.
One place, a hardware store that usually fixes stuff like this, said they couldn’t do it.
Schlepped across the city in search of another place: closed. Out of business!
Drove ALLLLLL the way back across the city and downtown to a third place. They charged me a pretty penny and apparently fixed it.
So I’m sitting here reading the Gnus of the Day when….flicker flicker flash flash!
The damn lamp is NOT fixed.
WTF, think I… Might it not be the lamp? What if the problem is not the lamp but the bulb?
Haul out of the sack. Change out the light bulb.
And what if the problem is not the lamp or the bulb, but the electric outlet?
Move the lamp so it can be plugged in to a different outlet.
Just this minute, the flickering has stopped. We shall see how long that lasts.
But if it does last, then (because of my over-eager machinations), we won’t know whether the issue was the outlet or the bulb, since the thing now has a new bulb in it.
Oh well. If it stops with its flickering trick, at least it will be fixed.
Yeah…leastwise. At the cost of a whole day of my priceless time.
Fortunately, now that I’m not working much, my time is without price. But driving through Phoenix’s gawdawful LA-style traffic is just unholy. While it was kinda fun to explore old precincts that I haven’t visited in years, this city really is a gawdawful place to drive. Public transit isn’t much of an option: it’s slow and you end up sitting elbow-to-elbow with some very creepy (and smelly) folks. So I didn’t much enjoy yesterday’s endless junket.
****
{minutes pass}
***
Now, neither light is flickering.
WTF?
So…I wasted the whole goddamn day and a quarter-tank of gasoline and a fistful of dollars for…nothing? And I got ripped off by at least one local lamp merchant; probably two.
Nice.