So, uh, ever have one of those days where you wonder if you maybe accidentally crossed a vengeful spirit? Or at least annoyed one with moderate capacity to do mischief? We're maybe not at a dangerous point but we certainly have questions.
So the big one is that Thursday our kitchen light stopped working. Turning on, particularly, but it's hard to think what else we'd have it do. We did some grumbling about how recently we'd changed the halogen bulb in there --- ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger thought it was only a few months; I thought it was a few years. In fact, based on my whining about it on my humor blog, I know the bulb burned out last summer, so closer to her recollection than mine. It had also burned out in 2020, so it's not our imagination that these are burning out faster since the old bulb had lasted since no later than 1999.
Friday, after failing to find our old stock of bulbs --- turns out the last one had been used in 2024 --- I went to Meijer and found they didn't have one, so I went to Lowe's and they did. Not that it mattered: it turns out the bulb is not the problem. The fixture is. Or the switch is, although since it's correctly showing the amber glow when in the 'off' position I think that's less likely. I guess there's a possibility the wiring between switch and fixture is but I really hope not.
Anyway the need is to call an electrician, and I have so far forgotten twice to do that before the office was closed. Maybe tomorrow.
A more serious bit of mayhem? While I was in the dark kitchen to get a pop I heard the horrible sound of plates falling. Very careful opening of cabinet doors revealed ... they hadn't? But then what did happen?
On closer examination, it turns out one of the braces holding up the middle plates shelf gave way, and the whole shelf dropped ... onto the extended straw from a travel mug that's a little too awkwardly sized to actually be used and that, for want of a better idea, we'd left on the bottom shelf. This turned out to be a magnificently lucky placement since the shelf had maybe a half-inch at most that it could drop, and while a few things were out of place, nothing was damaged. I unloaded the plates and cups and stuff onto the stove top, for now, and got a couple replacement brackets from Ace that I didn't find time to install today.
Still, very weird to have the bracket snap like that, and in weird circumstances where it's all basically fine.
Less weirdly cursed and going back a week or two, but two of the screws fell out of the hinge on the laundry chute, so that needs replacing. I got some screws that seem to be about the right size from Ace as well but again, didn't have time to deal with it today. ... This makes it sound like I'm just sitting around letting things fall apart but in my defense, doing things is hard.
Anyway, back to something not cursed: the Ionia Free Fair and the art exhibitions.
Now and then you see pictures that sure seem like bunnyhugger might have taken them, but she didn't. Here's just a merry-go-round that I assume is one of those in Holland, Michigan, but going to check for sure would be a tiny bit of work that I could avoid by just waiting for bunnyhugger to see and tell me.
And this is not a picture of our Athena angrily nesting; we didn't have Athena yet --- in fact I think she wasn't even born yet --- and the picture is by someone else entirely.
The fair had a special Christmas theme for this year and artworks fitting that theme were gathered separately, also making it a little hard to be sure you'd seen, say, all the ribbon-winning pictures for a category like 'Profiles' or 'Pets' or something. Anyway, through the windows behind you can see the Sun has gone nova. Whoops!
And then here's a cabinet of cameras. Note the boxes of film on the top and the bottom shelves.
And here's a little living-room display. I don't know if it was a specific art installation or if it was just to add to the Christmas theme of the --- wait a minute. Computer, enhance.
Oh yeah, your traditional Christmas setup featuring a newspaper from the middle of July. (I am genuinely curious why, of all the possible newspapers to set there, they picked this one, other than that I suppose it's easy to find reprints of this particular issue.)
Trivia: The word ``halibut'' derives from Middle English words ``butte'', meaning any of a number of flatfish (including flounder and halibut), and ``haly'', a form of ``holy'', reflecting how it was commonly eaten on holy days; thus, ``halybutte'', evolving into ``halibut''. Source: Webster's Dictionary of Word Origins, Editor Frederick C Mish. Dutch has the cognate heilbot, and Low German heilbutt; Norse also has heilag-fiski, ``holy fish'', and Swedish ``helgeflundra'' and Danish ``helleflynder'', both meaning ``holy flounder''.
Currently Reading: Force: What It Means to Push and Pull, Slip and Grip, Start and Stop, Henry Petroski.
