Love Triangles

Second Saturday started out innocently enough, but then again most Saturdays begin in this manner.

I got up first, as I am inclined to do, walked out to the kitchen to turn on the lights......pushed in the switch.....saw the LED lights flicker and then darkness again......hmmmm....that innocent part didn't last long, huh?

I suspected a blown 12 volt fuse, and the fuse bank for the kitchen is located in my closet.  Now I could have gone back into the bedroom, opened my closet, pulled out the stuff that blocks access to the fuse panel and checked it right then, but that would probably have awakened TLE, and nothing good comes of that.  I decided to let the lack of lighting in the kitchen slide until her loveliness awoke.

About the time I was finishing my daily blog entry TLE did wake up, and I went to work clearing the floor area of my closet so I could find the blown fuse.  There is a little typed list of what each fuse controls on the wall just above the fuse block.  I ran my finger down the list stopping on "kitchen galley lights".....hmmm fuse #13.  I'm not superstitious, and did not even think twice about the number.....I just counted down the row of fuses until I hit #13, and sure enough it was blown.  "Great!" I was thinking.....I love it when the solution is simple....of course simple is a relative term.  I went into the kitchen and turn on the lights and they worked.....of course, somewhere in the back of my mind I'm wondering why the fuse blew.....was it just old, or did a short cause an overload?  Within 60 seconds I had my answer....I began to smell that "something electrical is melting" smell, and quickly turned everything off....the smell was coming from the area of the wine glass cabinet on the right side of the sink.....I couldn't tell if it was from the light switch, from inside the wine glass cabinet, or from the cabinet above it.  Sooo, thus began the emptying of the 2 cabinets, and the removal of the light switch plates on the right side of the sink.  Ultimately we determined the smell was coming from the converted fluorescent light fixture in the wine glass cabinet.....apparently a short occurred somewhere in my wiring.  As I pulled out the fixture I wondered why I had bothered to re-use it in the first place.....the space in that cabinet is very tight, and I had a very difficult time re-installing it, so I decided, with TLE's approval, to just re-install two new lengths of strip lights on the ceiling of the cabinet, so that is exactly what I did.  Within an hour I had connected two foot long LED strips together, and attached the lead wires.  Then it was just a matter of affixing them to the ceiling of the cabinet, and connecting the two wires to the appropriate ground and power wires.  It was significantly easier to install two lengths of LED lights than to fix, and re-install the old fluorescent fixture, and it turned out well.

 The lights installed above, and the resulting effect below

By the time I finished this impromptu light project it was closing in on Noon, and any plans I had for the day were erased by Mr. Jello, so TLE and I decided to finish watching a movie we had started to watch the night before, but when we realized it would not be over until 1:30 am we just hit the record button at midnight and went to bed.  The movie, released in 2000, is called "Vertical Limit" starring Chris O'Donnell (NCIS L.A.), Bill Paxton, and Robin Tunney (Mentalist).  If you didn't like heights before this movie you will really hate them after.

Around 2 Tom and Darlene invited us to head into Surprise for a shopping foray.  Darlene had purchased, at several box stores, bags and bags of shower curtains and other bathroom accessories for the new home......she wasn't sure what she and Tom would end up liking so she just bought everything.  Well, TLE had helped her decide what to keep and now it was time to return the unused items to Walmart, Target and Bed, Bath and Beyond.  While we were so near Home Depot I bought a few things to replenish some of my "garage" supplies.  

Whenever you go driving with Tom and Darlene......of course, throw in TLE to the mix.....you never, ever just drive home....there is always something to explore....at least this time the exploring was done in broad daylight.  If you look at the the area around Wittmann on Google Earth there is what appears to be a large dirt triangle just off Patton Road to the west of the McCloud compound.

The triangle from space

TLE's phone showing the "triangle" on Google Earth...the little white circle with the blue dot in its center is us.

Well, after driving west on Patton for 10 miles, or so we came to the spot where the mysterious triangle, only visible from space, was situated.....we found a barbed wire gate, Darlene opened it, and we were off on a dirt track to drive the triangle.

I wonder what the cows are thinking?

My guess was that this was some sort of old, abandoned airstrip, and sure enough, a Google search indicated there were several such triangles located around the Surprise area, this being one of them.  The only thing that remains of the 300' wide legs of this triangle is the dirt road we traversed......the desert has reclaimed everything on either side of the dirt track, but you can still see it from space.

We arrived back home just before 6 after a four hour tour......dinner was the rest of the spaghetti from the night before, salad, and the rest of the garlic bread.  Tom had the movie "Captain Phillips" starring Tom Hanks on his hard drive so we watched it on his 53" LED TV......this is a true story, and as the movie unfolded I remembered this story when it was in the news a number of years ago.  Why Tom Hanks did not get an Academy Award for his performance I do not know.....of course I thought Sandra Bullock should have gotten one for "Gravity", but what do I know?

Second Saturday (Tuesday) belonged to Mr. Jello and Miss Serendipity, and I have to say it was an interesting day.

Second Saturday sunset....a beautiful end to a day full of the unexpected.

Thanks for stopping by!