06-FEB-B-14
HOW MUCH
EFFORT DOES IT TAKE TO TRY
TO FUTILELY CHANGE A LIGHT BULB?
A DERWOOD DISASTER AS I ATTEMPT TP GET ELDP
PLANS ON COURSE
February 26,
2006
It would be very comical if it were
not such a disaster. I had been
diligently going around Derwood getting it into perfect ship-shape, for
multiple events this week and then even more dense traffic after I return from
I had already written of my efforts to clean up not only the drive ways and lawns area of fallen branches, but have used the bleak February winter doldrums to pull out all the fallen branches from the woods and to stack them for eventual cartage off to the sump or wherever tree trash goes. As soon as I have the woods presentable after the continual effort to clean it up, someone deposited all their tree trash in my woods to give me more to carry to the piles of stuff I will have to haul away eventually. I often see people strolling through my front yard as though they are making a visit to a park, walking around the ADT sign, and at least once, picking it up and throwing it into the stream as offensive to their sensitivities as trespassers—let alone as dumpers. Well, that is not the only problem I have got into at Derwood in trying to gild the lily and have everything perfect for the coming events of this week and springtime, including the post-Comps party for the whole of the EDLP and faculty groups in May.
THE LIGHT
BULB THAT BROUGHT DOWN THE GREAT ROOM
I have used the Game Room to spread out the huge stacks of Comps materials and papers for review. I study there and also type on my laptop in the pleasant ambience under the skylights at the windows when there is light outside, or, more frequently, write through the night hours before retiring in order to get the ELDP burden of “deliverables” out of the way before my impending absence, which one of the instructors has become quite snippy about, stating that since I am missing a class in March, I should really just drop the course and the program, and come back at it when “I have more time to devote to the program.” After all the effort I put into getting to sit the Comps against all odds, to stay with my group, there is no way I am dropping out of anything to take anything later, since this is the time when I would have “more time to devote to the degree—full stop. But, I looked up on Friday night to see that a light bulb in the e highest recessed lighting fixture in the dome of the Game Room between skylights has burned out. Early Saturday morning I get out the longer of the two ladders and try to climb to the top of it and reach up to remove it. No way. Even standing on the highest platform, a dangerous maneuver with a label on the ladder telling anyone not to do that, I cannot reach the twenty three foot ceiling fixture. I am not about to pile boxes atop the ladder and try to balance precariously on the ladder top and crash to the floor—a silly way to end all the other plans I have made. So, I am going to do something intelligent.
I drive to the Giant to buy a
couple of birthday cards to commemorate a couple of birthdays in my absence,
and ask them about a special pole with a socket to extend and change light
bulbs. No hey do not have it but Home Depot
would, but it is madness to try to go to Home Depot on a Saturday morning. I go anyway in a special trip, recognizing a
number of the clerics whom I guess are from
I then drove off to Ashburn on a non-ELDP weekend and used the library there to try to find an “instrument” already validated, to use for my thesis research so that I do not have to re-invent any wheels. I had a good conversation with the special librarian, who is the ELDP liaison, and she will be looking for me to see anything that might be helpful, and I also got a note from my thesis advisor by email. He was very encouraging about the timetable (Comps in April, Thesis proposal defense in Summer 06, and thesis defense all set for March 07!) Great! Now, he also told me to check out a thesis of a woman who got her degree with distinction because of her exemplary phenomenological thesis and I should get her thesis and maybe her to add to the committee. I wrote to him about the obstructionist phenomenological methodologist who had advised me to drop the program because she misinterpreted the six-months-known request to miss March of this coming session because I would be in Rwanda gathering data for the project she has assigned our class (06-FEB-B-12) I then wrote a note to Andrea Casey who had made it possible for me to sit the written as well as oral Comps this April after a glitch in the “incompletes” (see 06-FEB-B-13. I read the thesis that is exemplary, and after a long literature review and an extensive methodology section, the woman interviewed eight subjects three times each for ninety minute generating verbatim transcripts read several times and coded all 2,220 pages of this drivel, and she extracts from this a very thin conclusion that cannot be generalized and is not to be interpreted as accurate—not my kind of research!
I come home after a day in the library getting other assignments done in advance, and cannot wait to unpackage my light bulb changer. I go up the ladder and extend the telescoping handle and affix the grasper to the light bulb, the kind that looks like the bottom half of an hour glass. It is very difficult, but finally I get the bulb to turn counterclockwise and loosen from this socket, and before long—in great triumph—I have extracted the dead bulb. [I should have quit at this point and waited for someone taller to stand on boxes atop the ladder to screw in the new light bulb, which I just happen to have stocked up in advance. The new bulb is set not the device, and now screwing it the opposite way the telescoping handle collapses. Ok, that can be fixed, although I note that I have already spent more time fixing the tools than using them to accomplish anything, even the super duper special bulb changer, which advertises that I will never have to get on a ladder again. Fat chance with a twenty three foot ceiling recessed fixture!
Now the real trouble starts. I cannot get the grasped bulb to screw into the receptacle. I keep repeating and succeed only in dislodging the recessed lighting receptacle. I finally get the bulb to “catch” and screw it into the socket to get it to seat. I even turn the switch to see that the lights go on. But now, a bigger problem: I cannot get the bulb holder and pole to let go of the bulb. I cannot leave it hanging from the ceiling, so I turn it backwards. That is when the whole receptacle for the recessed lighting falls out of the ceiling, leaving a hole in the ceiling with a bulb still in the socket and a firmly attached bulb changer on a pole. I tug a little bit to get the bulb changer to come off, and it comes down all right—with the glass of the bulb in its claws, but the metal screw of its base still stuck in the receptacle. Now you think this is the end of the story?
I turned to the wall switch and threw the switch as it was getting dark----nothing. I then went over to the independent circuit to turn on the other lights. Nothing, of course. Now the Game Room, the centerpiece of a lot of visitors’ attentions in the next several weeks is in cold dark blackness. The ceiling fans which circulate the warm air that goes up to the ceiling no longer turn on. I go downstairs to the new circuit breaker box. All the circuit breakers are in the right positions. I have to come upstairs to see what the numbering system means for various household circuits. It identifies # 39 as the circuit breaker for the Game Room; I see when I get a flashlight to go over it again. I check all the numbers, and there is a #38 as well as a tandem #40, but there is no #39. I throw all the switches anyway, and nothing works.
What are the implications of this fiasco—besides my having bought an expensive and worthless bulb changer which is still grasping a half new bulb in its claws? I cannot study or write in the Game Room which is now completely dark as well as cold. My teammates are coming for the same purpose, and we will have to decamp to smaller rooms in the house with light and heat. The elegant SCI—CC will come with its expensive caterer to have a reception –where? In the basement? Where else would a Safari Club Hunt group gravitate to in my house? To a room where nothing can be seen, and if a flashlight were brought in, at least a large gaping hole could be seen in the new ceiling!
So, I was about to cover a few small details that would make and keep Derwood perfect. The last time I tried to do that a brand new Viking refrigerator/freezer came down on top of me and ruined the tile floor and went through the wall, not to mention crushing me on its way. Now, all I tried to do is change a light bulb. I even got the special tool for the task on a special trip to the Home Depot before anything was goofed up. Now, the old bulb is out of there, but so is the recessed lighting receptacle fixture. What is in there is the base of the new bulb, impossible to retrieve now, and what it has done is to bugger the whole electrical system of the Game Room to make it unusable just as a large number of people are coming by to use it.. Futility is one of my least favorite activities. If I don to like re-re-doing projects according to arbitrary and capricious whims of others, imagine my delight in setting out to repair something and destroying it and the whole system around it? It is fun to have these wonderful labor saving gadgets—so that no one will ever need to get on a ladder again to change a bulb—no, just to re-do the ceiling and its entire electrical system!