Open Season

Day 76: Christmas is done and dusted, and now it's open season on light bulbs. Scoff if you will, I've lived with the phenomenon for...well, way longer than I want to admit. When a certain type of mood affects me, no light bulb in the house is safe. They wink out if I flip the switch, touch the fixture or sometimes even if I just walk past, and over the next two weeks or so, I will probably have to replace half a dozen or more of various types and ages. And that brings us to one particular thing which constitutes a major lament, one thing I miss most grievously: incandescent bulbs. I am working my way through my stash of them at a rate which will mean I don't have enough last through my remaining lifetime despite using curly ones and LEDs in less critical areas than my work space. No modern bulb gives as much or as good light, no matter what the manufacturer claims. Today, a 3-way LED gave up the ghost and I had to replace it with one of my precious 100-watt incandescents, and I swear the 100-watt bulb casts more light than the 150-watt equivalent LED ever did. This is an important thing to those of us whose vision is less than optimal. And worse, that hideously expensive 3-way LED was purported to have a longer life expectancy than the antiquated incandescents. That, in my vast experience, is a bald-faced lie, patently false advertising. Here's hoping I get through Light Bulb Season without too many more fatalities.