This evening I came home to two out of four strings of my favorite Christmas lights in the world blown.
Now, I know what some of you think (Maureen, Catherine, possibly Nora): big colored bulbs are tacky. White lights are classic. Dickensian, even.
Dickensian (adj): Reminiscent of the environments and situations most commonly portrayed in Charles Dickens' writings
But I disagree. Wholeheartedly.
See below, now.
On Facebook, I once read the following:
"Anyone who has those big colored lights on their tree is a psychopath."
That one stung.
She may be a mad dog, but I see no psychopaths here. Amirite?
Oh, don't ask this ignorant idiot.
Anyway, that merriment was before I came home to this:
On Sunday, Fr. Moran gave a sermon about finding joy. While I'm not sure this is what he was referring to, a great joy in my life as of late has been to catch the fat glowing bulbs in my mirror.
(never you mind those cookies - I had one, FIVE tops!)
...or in the morning when the fog lays thick and it's before noon and I pretend to forget that that evening is Sunday, which means 5 am Monday morning is going to roll in quickly.
"How bad can that be?" - Ina Garten
Truly Ina, not bad at all!!!
What I've yet to share is that this is the 3rd string to blow (above is when I had merely one out) and they are $17 a pop. Which puts me in an interesting situation...
"This is a very interesting situation!" George Bailey
...because assumedly this means my outlets can't take the heat. But it fills me with despair (DESPAIR!) to think I'd have to go and buy white lights.
Particularly when this, ignorant, selfish, a$$ seems quite pleased with the entire affair.
"Joy is the refusal to accept the triumph of evil" - Fr. Moran, paraphrased
In another life, Doug would come over and we'd pop champagne.
There's no champagne with a tree like this:
It's simply unbearable. Take the champagne, take Doug even, but leave me my big fat colored bulbs.
"LEAVE ME MY BULBS!" - John Proctor, amended
With 11 days before Christmas, I need advice and I needed it 14 days ago.
Yours in the depths of despair,
13 comments:
For the record, I have never said that the lights were tacky.
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I think they welcome add-ons, as in the fool on your wall. Pretty sure they do.
Ahhh, Randy. Been waiting for your always-awesome-Christmas-post...so sorry for your loss :(
A. Killer post, Randy
2. Killer decor, Randy
and D. I know what you did wrong. We also dove head first into the joy of fata$$ bulbs this year, and Dave, in his obnoxious fastidiousness, actually read the box. Tell me, did you string all your lights together and plug them into the same outlet? Because these suckers are vintage in every way, including the mondo amount of electricity they use. We have four strings on our tree, really two sets of two, plugged individually into a heavy duty extension cord. (We used a non-heavy-duty extension cord first and the whole thing blew out!) So it might be your outlet, but you might still be able to use the fatties if you do it right. Here, here!
Truly great, smart, and hilarious post!!! I love your big fat bulbs. Not on my tree, Jim has always outlawed color, and I so love the white, teehee.....but I am in love with your decor and will mourn your loss my dear!
I had a 4 paragraph diatribe about amps, watts, and volts but I'm not sure it solved any of your problems. I guess the question is, are all of your strings connected together? And, does the string start at the bottom?
I assumed you blew the fuse on the lower strings by having too many connected (probably a 2 amp fuse, which is why you can only string two together, because those things are 1 amp each). But, if you blew the lower fuse, I don't think it would allow you to transmit the electricity to the top strings. However, I probably just don't understand the capability of these fuses very well and they might still allow electricity to pass, but not light the strings that they're connected to (doesn't sound right though).
Regardless, if you have more than two connected, you need to fix it. I would recommend running an extension cord with 2 or more outlets to the base of your tree and then plugging the two strands together and into separate outlets (be careful with extension cords though, some are only rated to 625W [5 Amps]). So, you would have two strands connected and plugged in individually. That way you should still be well under the total Wattage of the outlet, but you won't blow the fuses in your light strings.
If the fuse in your fuse box blows, then you're overpowering the outlets and you need to redistribute the energy to outlets controlled by different fuses.
No matter how hard I try, I can't avoid the diatribe... Sorry.
Haha oh boy, I had been worried that I sounded like a know it all instead of offering solidarity, but I think Dave took the helm on that one.
Here's what separates you from me, Davo: I will never have the irrepressible urge to write four paragraph on amps, watts and volts.
With that said - thank you for the advice, Randy. My two new strings arrive tomorrow (as I return my two blown ones) and I'll follow your directions. And peace on earth will resume.
Well thanks for the worry. I have 4 strings stringed together, connected to one REGULAR extension cord at the bottom, plugged into ONE outlet.
I guess at this point it's just a waiting game.
Great.
BTW, i found these for $15 a string at my local hardware store. It really really really brightened my day. I do so much shopping online that when I can swing by a local mom and pop and just pick something up that I need, it gives me an actual high.
Nice post.
Catherine, ha!
And Lisette, save the extra fuses that come! I love the fatty lights. We get ours from ocean State. Last year it was a near catastrophe when I realized they switched their fatties go LEDs! Yuck. Cold and gross. I tried them and it was incredibly depressing. I prefer them "hottttttt" (-Gianlorenzo). Luckily Manchester had 7 original boxes left - the only Ocean State around that still carried them. I bought them all. But I learned that if I had saved the old extra fuses, I never would have had to buy more. They're getting more and more expensive online.
And I always use one outlet. Not next year!
I NEVER said I don't like color lights! Crazy girl :) I love colored lights. I had the big fat ones when I was in my condo, but when we unpacked everything for our first Christmas here, they wouldn't light. I haven't found them since. I have small white red and green, they're actually pretty nice.
Well. Really this is my loss. Because these were once my lights.
Don't know why I ever gave you anything so nice.
No way - these are new ones.
...your suckers broke years ago...
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