Well, I wouldn’t say that I’m tired of playing Nintendo, but I can’t think of a better title tonight, so I’m sticking with the picture title.

It’s been a fairly busy day today. We did our normal Sunday morning ritual, going to church and whatnot. But then we got home, hung around for a while, ate (I baked a cake for a funeral tomorrow), and then loaded up to head for the C-A graduation which was held in Alberta. That started at 2, so we left here around 1:30, got there around 1:45, got seated somewhere around 1:55, and were back in the car by around 3:20 or so. That’s one benefit of a class of 12 students; graduation takes only an hour. 🙂

We swung back by the church to drop off the aforementioned cake, and then it was back home. I took a nap for a while, while Beth and Kirstin hung around playing the Nintendo. After that was done, we made supper and I started in on my evening project — putting up the shelves in the kitchen.

When we went to Alex yesterday, we picked up the stuff necessary to get two long shelves (nearly 8′) put up in the kitchen above the long counter. Mostly for the purposes of storing all the random appliances and miscellany that we have no other good place for. Besides, it’s wasted space right now.

So, I broke out the drill, laser level, tape measure, and went to town. The whole thing probably didn’t take longer than an hour and a half to complete, even with anal retentive measuring and alignment. Even including bit sharpening (which I had to do because I was drilling pilot holes through plaster). Anyway, I put the shelves up (they’re adjustable, but they probably won’t ever be adjusted now that they’re up) after cutting about 4″ off of their 8′ lengths. Everything’s secured and good to go. In fact, I brought up most of the stuff from the basement and put it up on the shelves. They look better than I’d expected, and it turns that unused space into functional area.

So that’s nice to have done.

In other random news, what I’ve expected to happen has started — the yard light lamp is reaching its end of life. Now, realistically, according to the specifications, these HPS lamps are supposed to last around 5 years. This is lamp #2 in one year. Now, the first one was just a bum lamp that came with the fixture. I can deal with that. But the replacement was doing very well until last night. I noticed when I went to bed that it was cycling itself on and off. It’s on for probably 30 minutes, then cycles off and back on again. A normal signal of the end of life for a lamp of such nature.

This isn’t particularly surprising because after the beating it took when the reflector/diffuser was ripped off the fixture and hung by the lamp during the wind storm a few weeks ago, I was surprised the lamp even worked at that time. It was badly scratched up and I’m sure was shaken quite violently. They’re made to take a beating (to a degree), but not quite like that. The wind, pulling around the reflector/diffuser, just magnified the normal scope of movement in the fixture, except all of the pressure was then placed on the lamp itself (and not the fixture directly the way it should be).

So, I have a yard light that’s going to need another new lamp. Perhaps this time it’ll last longer than a year. We’ll see. At least it’s still working, even if it cycles off and on. It only takes about a minute to relight fully, so it’s not that big a deal. Just an annoyance. But it’s amazing how used to/dependent upon the light one becomes. It’s a real pain to not have that available at night.

So anyway, it’s getting late again and I’m heading for bed. Until next time…

–MZ