Cleolinda Jones (cleolinda) wrote,
Cleolinda Jones
cleolinda

Compocalypse, New: Electric Boogaloo

So Primary Electric of Birmingham descended upon my house today (and they're great guys; I recommend them) and started checking each and every electrical outlet in my room, the bathroom, and the hall. Some of the wiring was... indifferent, to put it kindly; but then, the developer who did this cul-de-sac twenty years ago also substituted NEWSPAPER for insulation in some of our walls, so I don't know why I'm surprised. They went through and rewired or replaced or something (I don't speak electrician) several of them, went round and round in circles checking them against the panel in the basement (they had one guy there with a walkie-talkie and two in my room) and: neutrals, quick wiring, circuits, loops. These are the words I heard. All I know is, they had to move two cabinets (one of them holding the TV), we had already moved the dresser away from the wall, and they did eventually insist that we had to move my bed. The thing about my bed is that when middle-aged people marry, as in my mother and stepfather's case, they bring possessions that are both many and large with them, as opposed to a young couple starting out. So I ended up with a beautiful old (as in older than me) queen-sized bed... that is A STONE BITCH to move. And where was the socket? Way back in the far corner where the bed stood close to the wall. So I had two guys heaving that thing to and fro--and then: there must be one more socket. There must be. Socket Behind the Bed is the only outlet on that wall, and there's an embarrassment of sockets in this room, so surely there's one more on that wall. Is it...

"It's not behind The Shelf," I said.

"There's really no other place it..."

"IT'S NOT BEHIND THE SHELF."

It was totally behind The Shelf.

I had already evacuated the Middle-Earthians (and hidden everything even remotely related to Twilight, for the lulz or not, because two of the electricians were younger than me so there was a high probability of them recognizing things and I was not in the mood to be judged on this particular day, which is basically to say that any and all Edwards and Bellas were tucked away safely in the closet), so now it was the Ellowynes and the other Tonners' turn to be whisked away. And let me tell you, I would rather set that shelf on fire than try to move it again. It's six or seven feet tall and heavy as fuck, and pretty much cannot be moved over carpet (of course it stands on carpet). It probably took us ten minutes each time to wobble that thing in and out of place.

By "us," in this case, I mean my mother, because you know she's going to come home on her lunch hour and supervise this. I mean, you know it and I know it. And she just keeps shaking her head and muttering to me, "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry about this," like... I appreciate the sentiment, but what else are we going to do, you know? We're not amputating a limb or something. Nine of Staves, baby. It's cool.

And then the Electrician Dude in Charge said he needed to go into the attic.

My first reaction was to laugh--you know, the hysterical OF COURSE YOU DO, IT WOULD NOT BE MY LIFE OTHERWISE laugh I have developed over the past month, because a significant portion of my belongings was in the bathroom stacked against the attic door. My second reaction was to ask (warily), "Where in the attic do you need to go?" He points in a roundabout motion to invisible parts of the house--he needs to go around the front stairwell and back around to the eaves by my room. So then my third reaction was to blanch in horror, because there's a point where the attic just... stops. There's a meager expanse of floor, and then you get to either side where the eaves start to come down fairly low, and there's just... rafters... after that. And tumbleweeds of insulation (apparently the developer splashed out on the upper floor and just didn't have enough for the rest of the house? I don't even know). Basically, take a rope and a lunch, because you might not be coming back.

I don't know what all they did, but they did a lot of it and were really great about it and I think everything works now. Apparently the problem was that the outlets were "losing voltage," so whatever they tightened or rewired helped that (they also rewired the light switches. P.S. I now need a new overhead fan, because apparently it was holding on by a sprocket and a prayer. Which does explain the rattling), and they said to check the voltage requirements on whatever new computer I end up getting, but it should end up all right. And I do have the uninterrupted power source (UPS), which apparently beeps if you make it unhappy, so that's the canary down the mineshaft.

And I'm pretty sure the guy found his way out of the attic. I mean, probably.


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Tags: cleaning, computers, dolls, tribulations
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