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pullstring light switches are unsuited for flophouse use
Sunday, August 8 2021
Eventually I drove out to the Brewster Street house to do some electrical work. Eric arrived soon after I did; he still had lots to do, some of it in big attic room, which, in the absence of air conditioning, was brutally hot for anyone trying to do anything up there. I started my work in the basement, where I installed a wall switch for an overhead light I'd evidently installed soon after we'd bought the house (I recognized my work). Back then, I'd thought a pullstring switch was sufficient. But that switch no longer had its pullstring. Evidently it had been switched one too many times by one of the many marginal people Eileen had staying with her back when she was operating a de-facto flophouse. Pullstring switches are okay for light residential use, but they're no good for a hotel, particularly one with plenty of children coming and going.
For this same reason, I've been using surface-mount conduit to install wall switched to replace all the pullstring switches in the three bedrooms on the second floor. There were two bedroom left to do, and running that surface conduit is time-consuming, requiring things like custom notch cuts into light fixtures. So I'd brought a speaker that can play MP3s from a thumbdrive so I'd have something to listen to as I worked. It wasn't long before Eric had to go elsewhere, leaving me by myself to do my work.
This morning I'd taken a 150 mg recreational dose of pseudoephedrine, which started making me increasingly thirsty. So at some point I walked out to Broadway and bought a sixer of Hazy Little Thing IPA. Landlording while drinking a cold beer on a hot summer day is one of the lesser-heralded pleasures of life.
At some point I realized I needed to get an inside-elbow fitting for the surface conduit, necessitating a run to Home Depot. While there, I got all the white switch plates I thought I'd need. Mustafa was right; replacing an ugly beige dual switch plate with a bright white one made the paint job he'd done look much better.
I managed to do all the upstairs switch installation without even turning off any circuit breakers, since that would've killed power to the speaker playing my MP3s. (I was listening mostly to Scientific American National Park Nature Walks and Radiolab, the latter now being sponsored by the science-boneheaded Templeton Foundation. Perhaps this why they've been covering stories like origin of "LIfe Every Voice and Sing" (the Black "national anthem") and the disappearance of Harry Pace.)
There are actually several pullstring-operated switches still in the Brewster Street house: one in the bathroom above the tub and one in the middle of the second-floor hallway. But it's okay leaving those in place for the time being.
This evening after Gretchen got home from work, her erstwhile girlfriend Barbara (who is still in the area) came over for dinner. Gretchen had made lasagna yesterday, and we ate it with green beans and a salad out on the east deck (and Barbara and I also had Hazy Little Thing IPAs). If it weren't for the mosquitoes, it would've been a pleasant meal full of interesting conversation and incisive humor. But eventually we were forced inside, where we played three rousing games of Bananagrams, with each of us winning once. (Barbara is the person who introduced Banangrams to us in recent years, though I'd played it in the past a number of times.)
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