New Lights

I think it is a wife's job in life to adsorb any free time a man finds. That's what my wife said when I told her that I had finally finished up the task of the day and added, "Well, there goes a Saturday."

Anyhow, earlier today, as we were puttering around the yard doing a variety of things, my lovely wife decided that it was time to replace the lovely lights lining the driveway with some that actually lighted up. We bought one of those solar panel with 6 lights packs from Costco a few years ago. It worked fair for a while, though it was never very bright. Eventually, a couple of the lights got run over and the lights got dimmer and dimmer.

I thought it was a reasonable idea but this time we were gonna run real electricity from the house. I figured it wouldn't be technically difficult, but it was going to be an all afternoon job digging a trench to run and hide the wire. So we went to Lowe's, found a light kit (6 lights, a transformer and 50' of wire) that we liked and bought it. We needed to get more wire (100 ft) cause the lights were gonna be far from the house. We also bought three more lights so if someone runs over one, we can replace it.

It took all afternoon to dig the trench for the wire. I got some help from my daughter. She shoved wire into the ground as I split the dirt with a square spade. I started it one way and realized I grabbed the 50 ft wire instead of the 100 ft wire. Pull it up start over. Redid it with the longer wire and realized that the path we were taking wouldn't reach the bottom. Pull it up and start over. So I went straight across the yard. Once I got to the bottom of the driveway, where the lights go, my wife came out and helped a bit with planning and assembly. With the 100 ft wire, we had about one foot to spare. Eventually as the sun was setting, I got through just in time to start the charcoal for supper.

As it got dark, the lights came on. Well, four of the seven that we set up, came on. So I went back out and did a bit of troubleshooting. The little doodads that stick into the wire, missed on a couple because we were using a larger guage wire and had to cut off the little guide thingies. So I fixed that and wiggled the light on the other and, voila, all the lights are on and the job is done and the day is gone.

Maybe, I'll stick in a picture some day.



And there it is.