Anyhoo...I told Farmer H that I needed a bulb put in my lamp. It's not that I can't perform such a task myself. I could do it in a jiffy...if I only knew where to look for the bulbs. Farmer H has a stash. I think it's probably right beside where he keeps the fiber-enforced shipping tape. I don't have the right chromosome to be privy to this information. The boys knew. "PONY! Go get your mom a bulb!" Apparently, it's like Bulb Mart. A shelf with all manner of bulbs, from the long fluorescent replacements for the ceiling lights in my office, to a tiny colored bulb for the string of Christmas lights that stay up on the porch eaves all year long. I just don't know where Bulb Mart has a storefront.
Anyhoo...I got home from The Devil's Playground today, after buying my very own bulb, in a two-pack, unsure of whether it's the right kind, these newfangled light bulbs kicking my butt in the LED and wattage knowledge departments. This lamp used to have a 3-way bulb. I think It went from 40//60/75, but I could be wrong. The only bulb I could find that looked like it might work came in a 2-pack, and was a 60 watt bulb that says it's multipurpose. It's freaky-looking. Clear. See-through. Not milky white. And it doesn't have one of those filament thingies that would burn in half, and then you could hear that the bulb was bad by shaking it. This one (two) had four copper-looking prongs sticking up.
I wish I'd taken it out of the package, but I just plopped it down on the seat of my OPC (Old People Chair) and took a picture of the box. I seriously doubt that I will be able to tell that it saves me $12.88 per year. And it won't, really, because it cost me $4.78 for the pack. The illustration on which is misleading, because the bulbs LOOK like they're the old opaque kind, but inside the box, they are crystal clear.
Anyhoo...as I was about to tell you, I got home and went downstairs with that bulb(s), and when I flipped on the light, saw that Farmer H had been working his magic. He had replaced the CEILING BULB that had been burnt out for a couple of months now. I was so used to it that I hadn't even added it to my lamp complaint. It's by the big-screen TV, and I turn those overhead lights off anyway when I watch, so I didn't care too much about having a working bulb in that area.
When confronted with changing the WRONG light bulb, Farmer H declared that he KNEW I was talking about the lamp, but that he just didn't have a bulb for it. Huh. Like he's banned from The Devil's Playground, and every hardware and home supply store within a 60-mile radius. Because he's had A WEEK, people! And I know he has been inside at least one of those stores during that time. So he has neglected to take my verbal work order seriously. It's not like he doesn't have time to get a light bulb and put it in. He's freakin' RETIRED, by cracky!
Oh, yeah...and he ate a slice of 6-week-old bologna for lunch last week. I'd told him repeatedly not to eat the open bologna in the plastic container, that I was going to give it to the dogs. To use the brand new package when he was making a sandwich. He's pretty lazy, I guess. Or hears me like I'm Charlie Brown's teacher. It's not my fault he's always home, and has the dogs laying around the outside of the Freight Container Garage so I can't give them snacks on the Mansion porch.
UPDATE!
I tried the new bulb, and it works just fine. Here's the old one that fizzled out. It had been flickering for a few nights. Then I'd turned it on and gone back to my lair for about an hour, and when I came back, it had died. Like people and pets, maybe, who don't want to go while you're around, and wait until you step out of the room.
I'm pretty sure Farmer H had told me THIS one would last 10 years, too. In reality, its lifespan was considerably shorter.
5 comments:
I don't like those twisty bulbs. They promise xxx hours of use, but when you break that down to days it isn't all that much and I remember way back when I was a young thing an ordinary incandescent bulb lasted years and years, then they got changed to deliberately fail (yes that's true) after a much shorter time so people would have to buy more often. All lighting has gone downhill since then. I'm not sure if it is Mazda or Osram or even some other company, but in the beginning a giant bulb was made and turned on, left on 24/7 and it is still burning 80+ years later. We're being gypped, all of us.
Perhaps when it comes to doing your bidding, Farmer H is not the hardest-working bulb?
River,
I agree! It's a scam to keep us buying light bulbs. I don't like those twisty bulbs, either.
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Sioux,
Heh, heh! I see what you did there! His wattage is questionable, too.
River is right. When I was a child it was an event to need to change a bulb, hardly ever happened and we moved at least once a year, sometimes twice and I would swear the same bulbs were in the same lamps until the lamps died!
Kathy,
I've heard about that long-lived light bulb, too. Back when I was a kid, I don't ever remember my dad or grandpas changing any light bulbs. I must have been in high school before I saw a burnt-out one, and saw how the filament was no longer intact, and you could hear part of it rattle when you shook the bulb.
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