You know when you set out to buy something and your sub-conscious assumptions are revealed as the buying process carries on? I'll explain - two such instances have happened to me over the past year; most recently, for example, when we purchased a minivan [to my fellow man, insert moment of silence here].
When we set out to shop for said van we had a short list of ‘must haves;’ this list included leather seats (imagine everything gross that potentially can come out of the human body … now imagine it on your new car seat – hence, easily cleaned leather seats), a DVD player to keep the kids preoccupied on road trips, and doors that open and/or close by the push of a button; pretty standard upgrades found in any modern day minivan. We found one we liked, a 2008 Honda Odyssey … after all; it had everything we needed/wanted. False.
The day after we bought it I was running an errand after dinner, it was dark out. I got half-way down the street and noticed I couldn’t see anything, the lights didn’t turn on; ‘that’s odd, the knob must not be turned to the auto setting’ … or, as it turns out, uber high-tech vans built in 2008 that can essentially drive themselves by the push of a button … didn’t have automatic lights – seriously?!? With a little food, water and Dora I could leave my children in this thing for over a week and know that they would be perfectly content and well cared for … yet, I have to manually turn on the lights?!? My lovely wife thought nothing of it, ‘what is the big deal, my previous cars didn’t have that’ … What! It was then that I realized I had a sub-conscious assumption that any vehicle built primarily by robots would have automatic lights! How illogical of me … despite the injustice Honda has imparted on me, we’re keeping the van. Maybe.
So on to the real reason for my post, my apologies for the stream of consciousness on our van, our dumb-manual-lights-van. It was in context though; I was talking about sub-conscious assumptions. The other such instance came to light when we bought our house. We bought our house almost a year ago now, in April ’10. It was everything we’d hoped for, everything we could have wanted in a house ... Like the van shopping experience, we had our list of ‘must haves;’ this is the one! Everything we wanted and more! Shortly after moving in I realized this house was missing something essential … a stairwell light; I had, and still have, an assumption/expectation that any two-story house with a street-facing stairwell window absolutely has to have an over-sized light hanging from the ceiling.
Our new home did not; it had a tiny gold-rimmed glass wall sconce mounted about six feet off the ground, producing levels of light equivalent to that of a candle. The sconce mocked me each and every time I walked the stairs.
It was time for a new light. My lovely wife … ‘seems like a lot of work for just a different light’ what! Installing a new ceiling light would require running new electrical in the attic … without further ado, in less words, more pictures – here is what transpired (oh, and yup … more bees!):
Walking on the rafters, I made my way over to the general area where I would be punching a hole in the ceiling for the new light. I noticed a couple small abandoned hives, no big deal. More concerning ... the fairly large gap in my roof line:
I start running the electrical through the insulation and felt something a bid odd; I start brushing away the insulation, uncovering yet another bee hive! Panic sets in and I seriously start weighing my get-away options, one of which included a pencil dive through the ceiling ...
You can imagine my reaction. Well, you don't have to, I captured it...
Thanks to the giant gap at the roof line, its freezing in the attic so I had some comfort that the hive was abandoned ... and, well, I was fully prepared to pencil dive through my ceiling in the event I angered some sleeping bees. I scraped the hive off the wall...
It would have been far too convenient for the hive to only be on the exterior of the wall ... it was everywhere, inside each of the studs...
When all said and done, a good story and a new light ...
Sneak peak of a future blog entry in the above picture - a little stairwell paneling is underway.
cheers,
bw
