‘Breaking and Entering’, Mother’s Day, shower light install, ‘Flight of Passage’, ‘Mountain Patrol’

(posted from home)

(this post covers 12-16 May, 2007)

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Wednesday, 16 May –

Today I zoomed in to Starbucks for a pick-me-up and Times and then rode over to a gun shop in East York to look around. I then rode on down to Long Level to see what kayaks are in stock at Shank’s Mare. They have a nice demo Hurricane Tracer thermoplastic boat for 1/3 off but that’s still over $1000 so I’ll just stick with my ugly-but-paid-for boats, thank you very much. That afternoon I started on the installation of one of three recessed lights for our hallway. The first step was to identify how to wire them in to the existing light/fan fixture and the two three-way switches in the hallway. It took awhile to stare at the diagrams in the wiring book and compare to the little bit of wiring I can see to determine the fixture is in the middle of the string between the two switches and therefore how to wire the new ones in. Then I pulled out the instructions from the housing. Something odd here--- these housings are supposed to collapse so they can be inserted up through the hole in the ceiling but this one has no way to collapse—it must be installed from above. Also, I see the housing is for a screw-in bulb, yet the bulbs provided by the local electrical house are two-wire halogens—and, in fact, are 12-volt bulbs while the housing is a 120-volt housing. What a screwed-up order… NOTHING is right. I got on the manufacturer’s web site and see why--- what an incredibly confusing site. Apparently the local retail lighting dealer isn’t all that experienced in recessed lighting and tried to use this web site to match components—and missed badly. Back it goes. I then spent the rest of the afternoon trying to match up components that WILL work. I am amazed at how poor the web sites are for these lighting manufacturers.
That evening we watched ‘Mountain Patrol’ (also known as ‘Kekexili: Mountain Patrol’), a Chinese true-to-life film about a group of men attempting to prevent the slaughter of Tibetan antelope by poachers at tremendous cost to themselves and their families. RT says it’s a 95 per center and we heartily applaud that rating. Excellent film.

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Tuesday, 15 May –

Today I spent most of this hot, sticky day installing a UL-Wet-approved recessed-lighting fixture and IC-rated housing in our shower. I had hoped to do the entire installation from the bathroom but had problems with wire-routing and had to climb up into our very small attic space on this 85-degree day. I had tapped in to the switched supply line for the bathroom fan so the shower light comes on when the fan is used. That’s perfect for the application and required only about three feet of wire. But a false ceiling and having to cross a ceiling joist made it impossible to route the wire from below. This turned out to be a good thing, though. I only needed a minute to route the wire so I spent another ten minutes inspecting the roof and the attic space for any evidence of water or insect damage and was happy to find everything is fine up there. Labashi LOVES her new shower light.

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Monday, 14 May -

Another under-the-weather day today. I’m slowly getting over it but not yet back to normal. That made it a web-day today. I’m also reading a good bit. I finished off ‘The Mangrove Coast’ by Randy Wayne White and started ‘Flight of Passage’ by Rinker Buck. The former wasn’t my favorite of White’s books, perhaps because it’s mostly situated in Panama rather than South Florida but it just didn’t seem very well written. But ‘Flight of Passage’ is a good one. It’s the memoir of Buck’s teenage years when he and his brother re-covered a $300 Piper Cub and flew it from their home in New Jersey to the West Coast and back.

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Sunday, 13 May –

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! Today Labashi and I drove over to my brother’s home for a Mother’s Day cookout. Mom is in good health and my ‘little’ brother and his wife are to become grandparents this Fall. The weather was a bit cool so we ate our burgers inside. We had a great, fun family day sitting around talking. Back home that evening, Labashi and I watched the Survivor finale. We were disappointed to see Yau-Man get screwed over (who does Dreamz think he’s kidding?) and, if Yau-man was out, happy to see Earl take the million dollars.

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Saturday, 12 May –

Rats. It’s another day under the weather with my cold or allergies (or whatever). I have no idea where this one came from. I spent a sleepy day on the web today and again had a little afternoon nap—something I normally can’t do. That evening we watched ‘Breaking and Entering’ with Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, and Robin Wright Penn. We liked it very much so I was surprised to see RottenTomatoes.com gives it a 33 on the tomatometer. Generally I don’t like films which score below 60 or so but this one has a lot more going for it than the score indicates. Law, Binoche, and Penn are great actors to watch and I very much enjoyed the look at life in multicultural London. The storyline was a little predictable but I don’t know—there’s something else going on here; this film didn’t deserve the trashing it took.