PolarLava::Blog

Every year it's the same thing…I vow that putting up the Christmas lights outside isn't going to get me all pissed off and stressed out.  And every year I seem to fail in this pursuit!  Yesterday was this year's adventure and it proved once again to foil my best intentions, although it really doesn't stress me out any more as I've come to expect it.  I hauled out the lights and started checking full strings of lights to see if they work.  After last year's adventure I vowed I wouldn't mess with burnt out strings as it it dirt cheap to replace them anymore.  So everthing is working except the one special/short string that I have to have for around the bedroom window.  Figures.  Score: Lights 1, Kevin 0.  Time for a beer!  I then plunk down and begin working through checking each bulb in the string.  Not bad, only 4 bad bulbs in a string of about 50 lights!  Grrr, but successful.  Score: Lights 1, Kevin 1.  Let the hanging begin…the lights that is, not me.

I hauled out the folding ladder I recently aquired when my mother-in-law moved out of her house, only to find it's about 2 feet shorter than my old bulky wooden ladder in the garage.  It reaches, but it doesn't extend past the roof line.  Ah, what the hell, that will do for now…I only have to pop up there real quick and put these lights around the two windows.  So after stringing up a power cord, up on the rooftop click, click, click…I stretch out the lights and begin to put them up.  I get about two feet done when, CRUNCH!  I step on the string and break a bulb.  Grrr.  Score: Lights 2, Kevin 1.  Of course the replacement bulbs are down on the porch.  Great, now I need to go down and get them.  Oh, but before I do that, I should probably rip one of my fingers open on this piece of protruding siding.  Yep, just like that and now I'm bleeding too.  Score: Lights 3, Kevin 1.  I then learned what I already knew…always extend a ladder beyond the point you are getting off of it.  Now I must hang over the edge of the roof and locate a rung to step on and then stand up without falling.  These days I climb on my roof about once a year…to put up these damn lights!  So after a bit of testing my approach to decending and quick checking that my wife isn't going to see me when I fall, but yet come out and find me before I die, I climb down…successfully.  After bandaging my finger and retrieving the replacement bulbs, it's back up to the roof.  With the bulb replace and the lights again working, it's time to start putting them up again. Score: Lights 3, Kevin 2.

I begin putting the lights around the window, but they keep popping loose in places.  So now we must delve into a long story…  The first year I put lights on the gutters I tried to use little metal bulb hooks to hang the lights.  This worked prefectly until the wind began to howl —as it always does here in Buffalo.  At that point, half of the lights got flipped up into the gutter.  So the next year I found a much better solution.  I bought these small plastic clips that attached to the gutter with velcro.  Cool, easy up, easy down, and they worked really well —the first year.  They worked so well that first year that the next year I expanded my efforts to now put lights around the front window and the second floor bedroom windows.  But after a couple of years of being blasted by ever increasing UV radiation, the velco "fuzzy pads" (That's the technical term, you know.) began to disintegrate.  I had to replace some on the gutters last year and now it was time to pay the piper on the bedroom windows.  This means another trip down to the workshop to cut some velcro strips.  Grrr.  Score: Lights 4, Kevin 2.  Man, I'm getting my ass kicked once again!

With a pocket full of velcro pads I trudged back up to the roof and began replacing pads.  Score: Lights 4, Kevin 3.  But not for long…the old pads don't want to peel off in one piece.  After struggling to lift a corner of them, they then shred into small strips or little pieces!  Grrr.  Score: Lights 5, Kevin 3.  So it's another trip down to the workshop to get a razor scraper which makes removal quick and easy.  Score: Lights 5, Kevin 4.  Ah ha, the comeback!  So the lights go up on the first window without further incident and it's on to the second window.  We're rolling now!  What the #!@$%!!!  A third of the way through the second window and all of the sudden this string of lights is out.  Lights 6, Kevin 4.  I begin to remove the lights and scan for a broken bulb.  Nope.  So I start looking for suspect bulbs and I'm banging the lights around and the next thing I know the're working again!  So are the working or are they broke?  I shake the around and they stay on.  I used to do a lot of electronics repair work.  Often times you would remove components and replace them or wiggle cables and things start working…just like this adventure.  We always called this "cable magic" and you moved on.  So am I.  Lights 6, Kevin 5.  So it's back to replacing pads and hanging lights.  Lights 6, Kevin 6.  Yeah!  On to the gutter/trim lights.

The new ladder worked much better for the gutter lights, but once again the velcro demon reared its ugly head.  Lights 7, Kevin 6.  But some more scraping and replacing and we are moving along.  Lights 7, Kevin 7.  The gutters are completed without further incident.  On to the front window.  Again, it's the velcro demon (Lights 8, Kevin 7) and of course I need more pads than I cut.  Lights 9, Kevin 7.  Another trip to the workshop, scrape, replace and hang and we are done with phase I.  Lights 9, Kevin 9.

Phase II: Lights on the banister and the giant candlesticks.  I went absolutely crazy wrapping lights around the banister last year.  Things were going well and I was having fun.  Until after the holidays and I had to unwind this mess.  Remembering my mental note from last year, I scaled things back and didn't wind as many lights this year.  So I get the banister done without incident.  Lights 9, Kevin 10, take that!
The giant candlesticks are likely nearly as old as I am.  These were from my wife (a.k.a. "The sentimentalist") when she was a kid.  They get blown over a lot and I used to have to take them apart and change the bulbs a couple of time every year.  After a couple of years of that nonsense, I learned to bungee cord them to the stair hand rails.  Thus I was quite suprised when I hooked them up and they both still worked without having to repair them after getting banged around in the garage all year.  Lights 9, Kevin 11, hah!  Then it was just a matter of getting the extension cord connections and X-10 controller wrapped up in plastic so they don't blow.  Lights 9, Kevin 12, we have a clear winner!

This year's first lesson is that I need to find some sort of replacement for the velco hangers or prepare better ahead of time next year.  And now I stand back and admire my handy work…and turn around to learn my second lesson: I see numerous houses down my street right out of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation!  My lights are so lame, why do I bother?