A Light Bulb Moment

As I know I've mentioned many times before, we live with very minimal light. I've adjusted to taking my little green lantern with me into the bathroom with me in the evenings. Before going out to dinner, I will hold up the lantern in one hand and attempt to put on makeup with the other. When I arrive at a restaurant or a friend's house, I usually attempt to discreetly make my way to the bathroom to make sure that I don't have any odd makeup streaks across my face before socializing. Everyone undoubtedly thinks that I have major bladder control issues as a result.

The other day, our friend Jonathan said, "But that bathroom light worked when I lived there." He was referring to the period of time when he and his girlfriend lived with us this Summer when they moved out from Boston. Josh and I poo poo'd this thought immediately. This could simply not be true given what we and anyone who came over to our house in the evenings for the past 6 months had been enduring. We disregarded it, but he brought it up again. And wouldn't you know, Josh screwed in a fresh light bulb and it worked. I don't know how many months we peed in the pitch dark because we simply had not changed the light bulb.

We're trying to migrate the few bulbs that we have to the compact florescent type like the one featured above from Home Depot although given how little power we are currently using, I don't know how focused we need to be on being green in this department.

A Christmas Miracle and Rotten Eggs

Who in their right mind tries to go to Home Depot at 11:45pm on Christmas Eve? We did. And we were very frustrated by the empty parking lot. I mean, aren't there a lot of people other than ourselves that have urgent Depot needs at that hour? Why did we need to go to the Depot, you may be wondering....Well, our Christmas miracle yesterday was heat. Hoorah! The furnace guys were able to temporarily hook up the furnace to some of the existing vents to pipe in some delicious heat for us until the rest of the work can be done. The only trouble was that the house soon smelled like rotten eggs. This is because the intake for the furnace is temporarily pulling air from the downstairs. Hmm, that still doesn't explain the rotten eggs. Well, my friends, that is because phase 1 of the plumbing that's been done down there involves lines that are open which means that the sewer lines are open. Thus, the furnace is pulling refreshing sewer-laced air up into the upstairs.

So, we quickly turned it off and set off for the Depot late last night in hopes of buying some caps to cover up the open pipes. Alas, we were forced to cover the pipes with duct tape instead which seems to have done the job. Josh is featured above covering the pipes. Now we have clean air upstairs. My body is in a bit of shock with this alarming warmness that follows me everywhere I go in the house. It feels unnatural not to have my four layers of snow gear, hat and long underwear on. It's positively delightful.