Reflections on light bulbs

Funny thing. I never used to spend much time thinking about light bulbs. Every so often, I’d pick some up of various sizes when I was at the grocery or hardware store. A light bulb was a light bulb, or so I thought. When I had my first apartments as a young adult, first in Baltimore and then in Manhattan, I’m not even sure that I kept light bulbs in my apartment. If a bulb burned out, I was just as likely to do with out or to “borrow” one from another light fixture until I got around to getting a package of bulbs.

In those days, I could by one package of light bulbs and they would last a long time. When I was living in Manhattan, I might have had a lamp on my desk. Since I was a college student, it would have been the intelligent thing to do. Other than that, it was ceiling fixtures, one in the living room, the bedroom, and the bathroom. And they might have been bare bulbs.

So, almost thirty years later, my lighting needs are much more complex. And we are living in different times. All of a sudden what type of light bulb I use can make a difference. After spending $10 per spiral light bulb in the supermarket, I found myself in the light bulb isle of Home Depot. And listening to the ribbing my partner was giving me for making a trip to Home Depot to buy light bulbs.

And I learned about lumens in the light bulb. Lumens are the measure of the output of a light. Don’t be impressed, I only learned about lumens because I asked one of the people in the orange aprons about why some of the spirals I had seemed to produce less light than expected.

I learned that the 3–way spiral from GE had more lumens than the 3–way spiral that Home Depot sold. The other spirals sold by Home Depot had comparable lumens to the GE spiral light bulbs and the CVS spiral light bulbs. So, I’ll stick with the more expensive GE 3–way spirals for now, except I have not been able to find any. Oh, and 3–way spirals do not come in the compact size. They are larger because more spirals are needed in the higher watt spirals.

I have put the spirals in almost all the lighting on my list. Some of the lighting that gets lower use will not get spirals. Nor will some of our 3–way lamps because the spirals don’t fit. And I have not yet seen any spirals that will fit the chandelier in my dining room.

I am glad that I have finally dealt with getting spirals. It is a small way that I can help counter global warming.

light bulbs

A couple of weeks ago as we were experiencing warmer than normal weather here in the northeastern U.S., I finally went out and did something that has been on my To Do list for a few months. I went out and bought those spiral florescent bulbs. These are the bulbs that have been in the news as one of the simple things that everyone can do to try to counter the effects of global warming.

I first heard about these bulbs a few years ago. The owner of a small local hardware store, Joe, told me about these bulbs. We had just purchased our house and I was frustrated that the 60 watt bulbs that we had to use to light the study in our finished basement did not provide the lighting that my partner needed. Our light fixtures were rated for a maximum of 60 watt light bulbs, and using 100 watt bulbs comes with a risk of overloading the wiring and causing a fire. I have lived through fires, and have no desire to tempt fate again. So, we stayed with the 60 watt lightbulbs.

I happened to mention this to Joe at the hardware store one day while I was picking up one some item needed by all new homeowners. He mentioned these spiral bulbs, which I had heard about. He told me that these bulbs use less wattage than normal bulbs. So, we could put a spiral bulb that produced about 100 watts of output, but would use only 25 watts of electricity. In addition, the life of the bulb was far longer than the ordinary light bulb. So, in the summer of 2001, we went and purchased 4 100-watt output spiral bulbs at about $10 per bulb. The only drawback was that these bulbs were much larger than the normal bulb. Fortunately, they fit in the two ceiling fixtures in the basement. Five years later, only one bulb burned out, that we just replaced.

I never dealt with getting the spiral bulbs for our other light fixtures until last week, and feeling terrible for continuing to use ordinary bulbs. I was at my local pharmacy last week and saw that they were having a sale on the spiral bulbs. And they now have mini spiral bulbs that actually fit in our smaller fixtures and floor lamps. The even make mini three-way bulbs, but these seem to be hard to find.

We have thirty lightbulbs in various lighting on the main floor of our ranch-style house, because many of our light fixtures have three or four light bulbs. And I am only counting the lighting that will accomodate the mini-spirals. So far, I have replaced four. And I have eight bulbs that I can put in other fixtures. I am starting with the lighting that gets the most use.

Of course, now that I have written about how simple it is to use the spiral bulbs, it is time for me take the action and use the eight sprials that I have in my closet. And purchase some more.

My Christmas Vacation

I was going to write about AIDs in Uganda last week, but decided that I had to spend some more time checking things out on the net before I put electronic pen to electronic paper for all to see. So, I hold off on AIDs in Uganda for awhile.

On the subject of what I have been doing the last couple of weeks, You can tell from last week's post that I watched a lot of football. Probably too much, but it was fun. Fortunately, my other half is also a football fan so this is something that we enjoyed together. Speaking of football, I get e-mail from Apple, including i-tunes updates. Do you know that you can go to i-tunes and purchase copies of the 2007 college bowl games? Now there's a thought . . .

Orange Bowl at half-time

This second day of January finds me watching the Orange Bowl. [Wake Forest almost blocked a punt] I have been a pretty serious NFL football fan –– as in the New York Giants –– for twenty years now. [two commercials] My Dad was a pretty big football fan, but for some reason I did not enjoy watching football all that much as a kid. I am not sure why. [Wake Forest scored a field goal and another commercial] Perhaps it was because I did not understand the game. But I do understand the game now, and have been enjoying watching college football this season. As an alumnus of Rutgers and a football fan, I have gotten interested in college football because the Rutgers football team had one of their best year. [first down Louisville]. And won their first bowl game. [first down Louisville but there is an official review, and another commercial]

We are watching our fourth bowl game in two days, with three more to go, I am thinking of my Dad. My Dad lived in Pasadena CA for five years when he was a little boy. He talked about being able to watch the Rose Bowl from the roof of his house. I always wondered if he snuck out onto his roof. I would have tried, I think. [booth review upheld call on field, first down Louisville]. I remember this beat up football that he had. He said it was a game ball from the Rose Bowl. I wanted to play with it, and even snuck it outside one day. [field goal Louisville. Tie game] He let me play with it for a while then took it away saying it was too fragile. At this time the ball was probably between 25 and 30 years old.

Now if my Dad were alive, he would ask me what I am doing writing this blog entry while I am watching the Orange Bowl. This is a big game for us because our conference is playing in the Orange Bowl. And I’d tell him that since I am good at keyboarding that I can write this AND watch the game at the same time. And correct my typos during the commercials.

My Dad preferred college football to professional football, but he watched both. [another commercial] There was one thing he hated, the super bowl pre game show. My Dad died on January 22, 1992. It took awhile to gather family together for his funeral so his wake did happen until the following Sunday. Super bowl Sunday, Washington Redskins v Buffalo Bills, his wake was during the super bowl pre–game show. Not a coincidence. By the way, the Redskins won, 37–24. In case you are wondering, I have a helper, a copy of the 2007 Sports Almanac.

[Wake Forest fumble with less than two minutes to go in the half. Louisville goes three and out. Wake Forest drives down to within field goal range and their hotshot kicker misses a 47–yard field goal. Louisville is up, 10 to 3 at half time.]