Possumblog

And so...

...slowly I lifted the lid. Nothing. Nothing but wet clothes, that is.

I took them out one by one, and they landed in the basket at my feet with a damp clammy plop. I had just reached in to grab the last item when SUDDENLY! There it IS! A PENNY!

See how exciting that was, even though you already KNEW what was coming! That's the way ALL my weekends are--just one exciting thing after another! I went to the grocery store first thing Saturday to get detergent, and I found they had big jugs of liquid Tide with FEBREEZE!! And I got EGGS! And BACON!!

After breakfast, I unloaded the DISHWASHER!

Afterwards, since the rain had stopped I decided to work on my CAR! I recently bought a new (used) center brake light for it, because the plastic cover on the old one had gone to the Great Plastics Graveyard in the Sky. It had also come unmoored again from its fiendishly difficult to fix slidey retainer clip thing that was glued to the back window. SO, while it was nice and cloudy, I figured I'd go work on that. You know what? Even though it was cloudy, it was about 500 degrees in the car, and the humidity was like a wet wool sock stuffed in my nose. Five minutes I was drenched in sweat. Changed out the entire lamp fixture, and got out my BLS.

"BLS?" you ask?

Why yes, my BLS--the Brake Light Stick. Those of you with old cars know how often the brake lights seem to fail, and in order to tell which ones are burnt out, you need to be able to look at them, but to look at them, you need to hold the brake pedal down, and unless you have some of those cool stilts like the circus tall-guy has, you can't quite stand behind the car and push the brake pedal with your foot, so you need a short stick that you can wedge between the big metal hump on the floorboard (or other convenient vertical surface) and the brake pedal. (My BLS also happens to double as my ice scraper and frost brush, because that's what it is.)

Anyway, I deployed my BLS, and to my everloving consternation found that my new center high-mount stop light (CHMSL) did not light. It was the AntiCHMSL! (SEE!? EXCITEMENT!!)

Grumble. Grumble. Unhook the thing and find out that although the fixture looked brand new except for a bit of dust, it did come from the seller with a burnt out bulb. AHHHH!

Poop.

SO, a trip to the store was in order, since I had no new bulbs of this particular type. And I needed something to reattach the aforementioned slidey retainer clippy deal that glues to the back window.

Off down to the foot of the hill, AHGGHHHHH!! ARMADILLO!

Filthy leprotic little stupid beasties, and now they live where I DO! Oh well. On down to the car parts place, where I hoped that Lisa the Parts Guy would be on duty.

She wasn't.

It was Terry. Not me, though--the OTHER Terry, who has more gray hair and less fat. ::sigh:: Found a package of bulbs, found some black adhesive (the place where the retainer clip sticks on has a flat black coating on it to hide the various bits of electrical hardware, so I wanted something to cover up the BIG GIGANTIC BIT OF MISSING BLACK that used to be on the window before the clip came unglued the last time, taking part of the black with it. Not that you cared.) and headed back up the hill to the house.

AHGGGGHHH!! ARMADILLO!

I'll never get used to seeing those things.

Home, pop in the new bulb, use the BLS--YAY!! SUCCESS! Sort of. Something was wrong.

Even though all the brake lights were working, the specially-designed Volvo Bulb Out Warning Light on the dash kept coming on every time I pushed the brakes. But--but the brake lights work!

Oh.

Wait.

I hate me.

A lot.

I figured out, as I had started to sweat copiously once again, the root of the problem. That new light I bought was a slightly newer version of the fixture. It still had the same dimensions, but the bulb and holder were different. And the way the Bulb Out Warning works is by measuring the electrical resistance in the circuit--a different bulb, even if it does light up, has a different resistance than what was originally on the car. Which caused the warning to come on.

I am a moron.

SO, off with the new guts of the light, and back on with the OLD lamp--thank HEAVENS the black plastic cover (the reason for all of this in the first place) was the same for both versions of the lamp--it still fit the old one. The only other thing left to do was to reglue the retainer onto the window, which was done with no further mess or dismay.

And today, that brake light is firmly attached to its retainer clips, and has a spiffy new plastic cover that doesn't have a bit of black electrical tape holding it on! Yet.

WASN'T THAT THRILLING!!

And now, ice cream for everyone!

Posted by Terry Oglesby at August 14, 2006 01:22 PM