Not long ago, exactly a week ago on March 3, my lamp broke. It was the one exkazatel gave me when he found out that I was suffering from a lack of light in my room. It all started after I woke up. I thought mim had been in and switched the lamp off, but when it didn’t come on after I flipped the switch, I figured the bulb had probably died.
After all, the bulbs here, like everything else, are the cheapest ones, and they’re not built to stay on all day and all night. My computer was running normally from the same socket, so it couldn’t have been a power outage. I twisted the bulb and all that stayed in my hand was the glass globe/bubble, which made me suspect this would be a bigger problem than just changing the bulb. I tried for a while, but there was no way to get the bulb’s screw base out. I took it to mim to see if she could come up with some trick to deal with it.
Well, she pried at it for half an hour, but in the end she got it out. Unfortunately, the lamp’s socket thread got ruined too in the process, so when we put a bulb in, it wouldn’t hold and wouldn’t light up either. The best part was when I was taking photos of it and turned on the flash, and mim nearly had a heart attack because she thought it was electricity :). But I didn’t do it on purpose, there was just too little light and the photos were terrible :(. By the way, here they are: 👻 There used to be data here. Now it’s just an empty lot on the internet.
I had to survive somehow until 2 p.m. – I have a feeling tit was fixing the darling, which couldn’t handle the water demand of the whole house and household. Then we drove into town. First we stopped at Lidl, where tit went to return some sander under warranty that had completely stopped working for him. Then we set off on a trip to the Polish Castorama, off to get my new lamp. They had about 10 kinds. There were very energy-efficient lamps drawing only 13W, then some small ones, and also 2 of the kind I have.
One of them even had a stand, but that must be a Trojan horse of a purchase for whoever buys it – I think that stand couldn’t possibly hold it up, but more on that later. So in the end I picked one for 60 zl. On the way I also grabbed some bulbs. I wanted energy-saving ones, because the lamp was rated for a maximum of 60W (and there was no stronger one there) – maybe that was even the reason my previous lamp died. In the end I chose an energy-saving bulb, and the obvious choice was Osram. Why?
1) It was the only one there that shines like a 100W bulb (while having a power draw of only 23W), and above all Gi remixed the song Lampada Osram (Osram Lamp) into the Onirauti remix ( 👻 The domain expired like prepaid credit on a phone card.), and it’s an absolute treat :-). Yahoo!
So we went to the checkout, tit paid by card on the condition that I’d transfer him the money at home. I could have paid myself, I had my card with me, but I didn’t want tit to see my PIN. In Cesky Tesin they dropped me off at the barber’s while they went shopping, at Lidl again. After the haircut, for which I shelled out 68 CZK (which I don’t think is an outrageous price), I was heading to Lidl when my father spotted me on his way to Billa, so he picked me up and we drove home. At home I tried to mount the lamp.
I put it where the old one had been, but the clamp couldn’t hold it because of its weight. So when the lamp started slowly falling, I noticed and called mim to see what she’d come up with. She tried for half an hour, mostly complete nonsense that I knew exactly how it would end – that is, badly. mim very nearly managed to break the wardrobe, the bulb and the lamp and chip the wall as she was waving it around like a flag at a May Day parade. After half an hour I had to curse myself for calling her in and firmly let her know that it was pointless doing it like this.
In the end I piled books on the near side, set the lamp on them and weighed it down with books on the far side. It may not be a solution for perfectionists and bookworms, but it works for me :P. Photos of the lamp and bulb are here: 👻 RIP – this server didn’t even survive its own hosting.
And one more thing about the haircut: on January 31, roughly a month before I went for the haircut, I looked like this: 👻 Google shut down Picasa Web Albums long ago, and the photo vanished with it.(…) and today, a week after the haircut, it has already grown back a bit, the horror π : 👻 Google shut down Picasa Web Albums long ago, and the photo vanished with it. (ignore the stubble, it’s only because I don’t go anywhere, so I don’t shave – if I were going somewhere, I’d shave)
(the photos are behind links on purpose, the faint-hearted should not click! π )