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an ode to christmas lights

i have this theory that christmas lights are one of those things that have the potential to land you in one of two places: the looney bin, or jail.

let me tell you how much i LOVE christmas lights.  don't get me wrong, i really do love christmas lights. they're festive, it's fun to drive around and look at people's displays... it's not like any other time of the year.  but whoever designed the way they function needs to be tied up with all of the stupid, half-lit strands i have and dropped in a snow drift.

when we put up our tree, i pulled out the 4 strings of lights i used last year, all neatly bundled together.  of the 4, one worked completely, one not at all, and two, half.  when i started to put the one that worked on the tree, it kept flickering every time i moved it, so i just called the whole thing a wash and went and bought 4 new strings of lights.  they still work, thank goodness!

we bought some of those nifty new LED lights for the house.  C7s with the multi-colored, faceted plastic bulb covers.  5 strings of them.  we had to take one back when we were putting them up because it would only stay fully connected if you held it into the outlet.  because that's convenient to do when they're ON YOUR HOUSE in DECEMBER!  so we replaced that string and put them up about 2 weeks ago... friday afternoon shane informed me that one of the strings was out.  nice.  so dave tried to fiddle around with it and ended up taking it down (it's right in the middle, by the way) and we're going to try and exchange it for one that might actually work.  grrr.

a few days before that, i noticed that a string i had put on a tree in the yard was not working.  when i went out to fiddle with it, i noticed that half of another string on a bush wasn't working.  i fiddled to no avail... grrr.

today, i came home from the library and noticed that the string i have wrapped around the light post at the end of the driveway was out.  grrr.

i mean seriously!  i can relate to clark w. griswold, jr.  i know why he punched santa in the face.

grrr.

Comments

  1. MrsSoersdalDecember 14, 2008 at 7:51 PM

    My husband has this theory that companies make things to break easily so you'll just keep buying replacements over and over and over again. I used to think that didn't make sense because they'd be afraid of losing brand loyalty but I'm slowly coming around to believing him.

    ReplyDelete
  2. RachelDecember 14, 2008 at 8:30 PM

    Hey ...you will just get them all working nice and then it will be time to take them down again so that they can sit in a box and refuse to work next year! Oh...I feel so much better now =D

    ReplyDelete

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