While the man's away...

...the girls will play, or so I thought.  Instead, I spent an abnormal amount of time holding a smoking light bulb and running from an invisible skunk.  I guess I'm lucky my dog is here, however, he'll still be gone for three full days.  Who knows what could happen in the next three days?!

Backstory on the light bulb:
Before buying our house, we knew the current owners strived (What do you mean strived isn't a word?  Get outta here, little red squiggly line.) to be green, in a variety of ways.  They had a composter, a low-flow toilet, and a rain barrel, just to name a few things.  Their master bedroom had space for four light bulbs, yet they kept less than that in there.  Based on all the other energy efficiencies, I figured that was the case for the bulbs.

Fast forward to present day, ya know seven months later when I wished I had a little more light in that room.  But of course, I waited until it was just the dog and I when I chose to  buy and replace the bulbs.  I've replaced bulbs before, these should be no sweat.  I turned the lights off, removed the bad bulbs and put a new one in.  I turned the lights back on, just to see if two bulbs would provide the light I wanted.  It did, so I spent a little time folding clothes and basking in my newly-found light.

Not five minutes into putting my clothes away, the new light goes out.  Seeing as I did not have a ladder to stand on to put the bulb into the ceiling fan, it was obviously not screwed in tight, right?  Without turning the light off, I reach up and twist the bulb slightly to the right.  BAM.  Light bulb explodes, starts smoking, and the smell of burning something (dust?) fills the air.  I bring the remainder of the light bulb down, looking for fire.  No fire to be found, but I also couldn't find the inside of the bulb.  Knowing I had to capture this moment of a broken light bulb smoking with no fire in sight, I took some photos.  

Ok, so it didn't quite explode...but it shattered...and almost killed me.  Yep.

None of which show the extreme amount of smoke in them, c'mon iPhone, get it together.  With it being 11:30 at night and no one to discuss this situation with, I texted my parents:  "Whoever wants to troubleshoot an exploding light bulb situation should call after 9am tomorrow."  Without missing a beat, my dad replies:  "Unplug offending light.  Talk tomorrow."  Later I find out that he leaves his phone at the foot of the bed and the train choo choo sound was too much to take.

The next morning, after the initial shock of almost being killed by an exploding light bulb wore off, I was ready to get the rest of the bulb from the socket (with audio help from both my parents via phone).  Needle-nose pliers and a flashlight in hand, I stood on the bed to get close to the ceiling light.  At Dad's suggestion, I tried to pry it away from the socket (after cutting the electric to that room) with no luck.  In fact, little pieces of glass and metal came shooting out of the remainder of the bulb.  So, much to my dismay, I had to follow Mom's advice:  "Wait until Justin comes home, having two people handle this project will be easier."  Yeah, there's no way Rosie the dog will be able to drive me to the ER with shards of glass in my eye.

As I haven't posted in many months, I'm going to hold off on the skunk story until later this week.  Hopefully I'll have nothing new to report...stay tuned.

February Blog "Sponsor"

For the rest of February, I will be using prompts my mom has given me to write about.  Keep in mind, these are all over the map.  So hold on tight!  It could be a bumpy ride.

February 13:  STARS

As most Bobcats know, Emeriti Park holds a special place in my heart.  I'm not sure many know why, though.  Easily put, that's where we got engaged the day before I graduated with my Bachelor's degree from OU.  But why there?  What made that place special?

Back in 2005, when JZ and I started dating, we took a lot of walks.  Most of the time they led no where in particular.  My most vivid memory of us dating goes back to a walk to Emeriti Park. 

After spending the majority of our night with friends off campus, we took the long way back to our residence hall.  Yes, it's a residence hall.  When we got to Emeriti, the sky was so lit up with stars that it hardly seemed nighttime.  Instead of continuing our trek, we stopped in the park, sat on a bench (that I now call ours), and just looked up and around in awe.  The night was already memorable, just based on the overall beauty.  After talking and staring at the sky for a while, JZ admitted that he had seen the stars and sky like that.  He said that before he had wished he had someone to share the experience with.  He was happy that it was with me the second time around.  Please hold all awwws, thank you.  And that's my favorite story about stars!

February 14:  VALENTINE'S DAY
I'm not sure when it started (or how) but a while back, my mom started doing Valentine's Day cookies.  Keep in mind, most of the "family" cookies came from a refrigerated roll or the break-away pieces, so this was special (obviously).  So, these, as far as I can tell, were made from scratch.  Lots of icing, design, and decorations.  Beautiful cookies...but they didn't travel well.  Imagine the bumpy ride from London to Athens (both Ohio, NOT overseas!) while I was in college.  Although Valentine's Day is like any other day (for the most part), these cookies reminded me, no matter where I was (Athens, Perrysburg, or Toledo) that my family was thinking of me, regardless of the distance.

My Multiple Homes

I get a lot of crap from portions of my family when I refer to my parents' home as my home.  Since leaving home for college, I've had ten different residences, yet my home remains the same.  Sure, I live in Virginia now, in an apartment, that is currently my home.  I think my major setback is that none of those have been permanent.  When we first moved to Harrisonburg, I compared renting houses to apartments.  Unfortunately many did not allow pets, so I gave up and here we are.  Since we've lived here, I've subscribed to a listing of local houses on the market in a semi-reasonable-but-still-ridiculous price range.  Today though, when a new house came through, I took a look.  I realize we are not in that place that we can actually buy a house, but it's nice to think about.  One of the houses I had previously marked as a maybe had came down in price.  With that drop, the mortgage became less than our monthly rent for our apartment.  It seems impossible and ridiculous (again, I know) but the space there and yard, and deck, and on and on and on...just is so...blargh...out of reach?...ridiculous?...confusing.

So there you have it...my thoughts on a new home, that may be coming sooner than originally thought.

Bam!  I hit publish.  Mom and Dad, I'm going to trivia tonight and no, I don't want to talk about this post.   Love you!