Well, I mentioned about buying lights and installing them. When we installed the second light Sunday night and plugged it in, it winked for a second and went out. After a little fiddling, it worked again. After David and Jen left, I went downstairs at one point and it wasn’t working again. I fiddled with it more, but couldn’t get it working, so I decided to take it down and send it back as defective. Stephanie graciously offered to do the exchange for me (which is good, because she’s more forceful than I am about those sorts of things, and it was a headache since we bought the light with a coupon). Tonight, I unpack the new light.. and realized it’s dented to all hell. I’d have to hammer it out just to get a bulb to fit in there. So back I went again to Lowes, light in tow. This time it was no problem to exchange it (different store than where Stephanie went in the afternoon). Opened one box on the floor, and it was dented, so I put that one back on the shelf and grabbed another box. This box looked just fine all over, so I didn’t bother opening it. Got home, hung the light, put the bulbs in it, plugged it in.. and the same problem as before.
Now I’m ticked. This is the third light that I’ve had problems with. So, on a whim, I take one of the tubes out of it, put that on the shelf, grab a new tube and put that one in. Same problem still. Take the other tube in the light, put that on the shelf next to the first tube I removed, and put that first tube in the light. Hey, look at that, it works just fine now. Turns out the whole problem with even the first light was just that one of the tubes was defective (or at least finicky, it seems to work if it hangs one way but not the other). *sigh*
At least the end result was good, that I have plenty of light in the basement now. Going to wire in one or two more fixtures, and move all the lights over to a new circuit (might have made sense to do that first, but wiring up some of the lights was simple to accomplish and wouldn’t overload the existing circuit anyway). And it was good to know that I could get a bit of work done, even with running out to Lowes and back (which took probably an hour), after leaving work at a respectable hour. Now if I only got *to* work at a respectable hour.. we’ll see what happens tomorrow. Er, today. Damnit it’s late again.