|
|
|
hanging that Turkish lamp
Friday, October 14 2005
setting: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, New York, USA
Still operating on Istanbul time, I got out of bed at about 5am this morning and worked for a couple hours in the dark before the sun rose, not that I could see it given the clouds and rain, the latter of which continued to feed the trickling leak in the laboratory ceiling.
As soon as business hours began this morning, I jumped right back into the household projects I'd left abandoned two weeks ago. I went shopping and got a couple eight foot long four by sixes to use as girders beneath the solar deck's two northern support posts where they land on the laboratory deck. This had been one of the possible structural weakness mentioned by both the building inspector and the structural engineer. Currently they're supported by single two by fours connecting adjoining two by six floor joists.
I also got the supplies necessary to hang a glass lamp we bought at the Spice Market in Istanbul. The lamp is a simple metal-tipped greenish-blue bowl hanging from three chains and my job was just to run a couple of wires down to a lightbulb holder.
The sudden interest in hanging this lamp led me to buy a bunch of small efficiency fluorescent lightbulbs, the kind with screw bases that can be used in place of incandescent bulbs. As part of an ongoing energy-conservation jihad, Gretchen and I have decided to embrace these bulbs and use them wherever possible, which is pretty much any socket not controlled by a dimmer. They only use a quarter of the power used by an incandescent bulb, which in some places (particularly the kitchen and laboratory) will result in massive conservation of electricity.
The rain stopped in the early evening and I was able to clamber down off the solar deck and inspect the footing of its southwest support pillar to look for leaks. I couldn't see any obvious way for water to enter so I squirted a little roof patch compound around the footing to see if that would help. By now it was after 6pm and my biological clock, still set on Istanbul time, was pleading for sleep, so I did as it instructed.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?051014 feedback
previous | next |
