Okay, so our neighborhood is all alight and typically I am a bit of a scrooge when it comes to putting up outdoor Christmas lights because, well a few reasons actually:
1. It is usually cold out.
2. It is usually hard to put them up
2a. No straight runs
2b. No accessible plugs
2c. Up and down the ladder a lot
3. It sucks power like a toaster…for every strand…all night.
Number three is the crux of the matter, why get cold and chip a nail when all you are doing is glowing money in colors right outside where I can’t even see them. Also, I tend to forget they are on again, because I can’t see them and they stay on all night. Or worse, all day! Add to this that we see all of approximately .638 cars per night (all night) in our neighborhood, we have something like 3.25 neighbors that can see the front of our house, and finally there is no covenant governing how many Christmas lights we have up.*
But I digress. We all went on a walk tonight to share the lights with Abby and one very tired Amelia and I caught a bit of the spirit. The whole way to the store earlier I was lamenting the energy thing, and wishing I had gone online to find the most energy efficient type of light.
Already at the Freddies I am anguishing over the warnings;
“75 Watts per strand. DO NOT add more than 3 strands per line!”
Visions of marshmallow roasts danced in my head.
So the painful walk along the many shapes, colors, and catch phrases doing poor jobs of differentiating their products brought me to the “end” of the aisle, the cap, where I pause…fleetingly, and with the infamous bulb noticeably dimming over my ill kept head of hair I catch the fated acronym.
L. E. D.
Say what? I look again.
Uses up to 98% less electricity.
Cool to the touch.
Bulbs rated for 20 years.
No glass bulbs to replace or break.
I have seen the light, and they are multi-colored LED’s all over my house. I don’t even care how much they cost, I don’t even know how the other kind ranks in that department.
You too can buy them or read all about them at holidaycreations.com.
They are installed, and I am just leaving them on all night (for now) just because I want to. And you know what, it wasn’t even that cold out with my hat and gloves on and I have a lot of really straight runs that I hardly even need a ladder for, so I got that goin’ for me.
Lest you think I am finished and you may move on, stay thee, we cannot progress without exploring the opportunity for breakage!
I was pleased that I would be hard-pressed to break many/any bulbs so I pitched it as a selling point to Ang. And then I promptly stepped on one, oops! But it didn’t matter cause it didn’t break!
So there I was, happily setting up my unbreakable Christmas LED’s (with extension cords and all) when I let my guard down for just a moment whereupon I wrenched the porch light fixture apart while installing the plug adapter. Now maybe you have done the same trying to secure that last bit of looseness out of a light bulb? It is common knowledge that a loose bulb is a dangerous bulb…that may not hold my weight…were I to choose to swing from it…on a rope…like Luke Skywalker…holding Leia.
It must be secure.
But the strange thing is I did it whilst twisting the delicate end of an energy efficient bulb like this.
So, this is where I enter another strange member into the distinguished hall of things I have broken, the light fixture socket piece thingy.
* I kid you not, one of Abby’s dance friends families moved into a neighborhood where there is a covenant saying that they have to have X number of watts of Christmas lights up by a certain date. Covenants and me don’t go very far with each other but I would be one of the first ones to buy a HUGE flood-light like 1000 Watts or whatever, enough to satisfy the covenant, and point it right at the bedroom of whichever nincompoop decided HE didn’t want to feel like the only idiot causing a brown- out in HIS neighborhood so he wrote it into The Rules and made everyone ELSE talk with a lisp too!
