Illuminating the situation

One of the best things that's been done at the house over the past few weeks is that the lights have been hooked up.

I'm sure that all of you can understand why that's great, but let me give you a little bit more perspective. For the past few months, it's been dark when we get home from work. That means that we need lights on in the house to get any work done. Up until Thursday night, we were using spotlights plugged into either one of two of our working receptacles. While that sounds like a practical, if slightly annoying, temporary solution, the annoyance quickly outstripped the practicality. First, imagine having to stumble through the dark every time you go to your house, tripping over stacks of trim, the mitre saw, skill saw, and various other small hand tools to eventually find the power cord, and then locate the socket on feel alone, and then try to feel where the third prong is on the plug so that you can orient it correctly so that it will go in the socket. This was a good 5 minute job usually.
Then consider the fact that only two of the receptacles were hooked up, which means that every light or power tool we were using had to be run with an extension cord to the kitchen. Then consider that we only have three extension cords, and two spotlights. One of those spot lights was also touchy and sensitive. If you attempted to move it, it would shut off. And wouldn't turn back on until you unplugged it and replugged it and wiggled the cord a bit. Imagine doing all that in the dark. So that spotlight was relegated to stationary duty in the great room, otherwise known as the cutting and sawing station. The other fun thing about that light was that it shut off if there was a significant draw on the power. So, turn on the saw, the light shuts off. Awesome.

PS. Did you notice how I snuck that photo with the wood stove in there?