Let There Be Light

I got up at 4 AM, my new usual morning wakeup time. When I was drinking alcohol and awoke at this time of day, I’d have 2 or 3 more shots and go back to bed and to sleep. Now that I’m not drinking, I simply get up and stay up.

First, I take a pill that requires me to wait an hour before eating. Then I wait 15 minutes before eating breakfast, which varies in quality. This morning, breakfast consisted of several servings of potato chips, plus a banana, plus a couple of chocolate chip cookies. Perhaps I should call it “first breakfast” in true hobbit fashion. In a couple of hours I’ll have “second breakfast.” Then first lunch and later, second lunch. Followed even later by supper. Or dinner, if you prefer, but of late I’ve been returning to my roots. My grandparents called it supper. If I were eating a fancy meal, maybe I’d call it “dinner.” But I might end up eating a BBQ sandwich or a couple of hot dogs at the end of the day and for that, “supper” is good enough.

The house is quiet—only the gentle whir of the fan in the electric heater at my feet. Yesterday morning, the halogen bulb in the torchère lamp near my computer desk burned out. After only three decades of burning faithfully day and night, the bulb failed. I was so disappointed. Where’s the quality these days? I was considering taking the entire lamp back to the store where I purchased it in 1989 and asking for my ten dollars back. But I lost the receipt.

So I went to Home Depot and began searching for a replacement bulb. I needed a 300 watt type T bulb. I wasn’t sure if I needed a T2.5 or a T3, or something even harder to find. But I thought it was probably a T3 that I needed. For those of you not yet in the halogen world, type T means tubular and the number refers to the diameter in eighths of an inch. So T2.5 is 1/4 inch diameter and T3 is 3/8 inch diameter. It looks like this, more or less:

I began strolling the halogen lamp aisle and a young man in a Home Depot apron asked if he could help. I told him I needed a 300 watt type T halogen bulb, and he set about assisting me. Another fellow joined us, and he was dressed in civvies, no apron. He overheard me say 300 watts and he jumped in.

“Three hundred? That’s a big number. Are you sure? What’s it for?”

“It’s for a torchère lamp,” I replied.

“What’s that?” he said.

“You don’t know what a torchère lamp is?” I asked.

“No.”

“It’s a floor lamp, about so high,” I explained, holding up my hand. “It has a bowl shaped reflector on top and the bulb goes inside. The light reflects off the ceiling.”

By then the other young man had located a look-alike, but it was 500 watts. “The current goes through a dimmer, and a bulb that size might burn out the dimmer,” I commented, thinking: let’s stick to what the lamp was designed to handle.

Soon he found a 300 watt T3. He said if it didn’t work I could get my money back. I thanked him and went to a checkout machine and paid. I took it home and it worked like a champ. I have light again. And it only cost ten dollars, as much as the entire lamp cost me three decades ago. Of course, for that price I got 2 bulbs, so in another three decades when this new one burns out, I’ll already have a spare bulb ready to use. Thinking ahead, you know.