"In Case Someone Needs To Find My House At Night For Some Sort Of Emergency, Like Pizza Delivery" Tip #4

Lighting is important.

However, lighting isn't an "on" or "off" proposition. It's like all the stuff that breaking-and-entering chick, Goldilocks, stumbles across. There's two extremes and just right. Actually, there's even more than that, so it's even more complicated than Goldilocks' world.

First, if you're expecting someone, it's common courtesy to leave the light on for them. And if the bulb is out, it's common courtesy to change it.

Now, if you're deciding to put numbers up on your home, don't put them up until you've had an evening to think about it. By "think about it", I mean "turn on the porch light, go outside, and see where the less-shadowy bits of wall are". It really does more harm than good to turn on a porch light if the fancy "old fashioned street-lamp" style fixture casts shadows over the numbers. You'd be better off leaving the light off, at that point, as it might make the numbers easier to read. The shadow issue is what makes this slightly more complicated than too hot/too cold/just right.

Also, if you insist on having really bright outdoor lights, don't put the numbers too close to where the light source(s) is (are). Number too close to a bright light can be just as difficult to read as numbers that are in shadow... and what's worse, shining a flashlight (or headlights) at this problem doesn't help.

Seriously, use some sort of temporary method to put up your numbers, then have someone who doesn't know your house number drive by slowly and tell you what numbers seem to be on the side of your house. If they're able to read them, permanently affix the numbers to your home, and never change the wattage or the light fixture of your porch light.

Speaking Of My Birthday...

The Friday before, my bowling team put together a little birthday celebration for during-bowling... which involved lots of cupcakes that I ended up taking home, I guess because I'm not quite to the level of have "as a house" after my "big".

I don't remember the night in great detail, as it was a very celebratory evening, but I met new people and amazed them with my social skills, I'm sure.

Also, on the evening of my birthday, we had an event at our school, and a couple of girls did the Mr. Riggs' motions (with lip-synching) and dance to They Might Be Giants' "Older", which is the birthday tradition in my classroom.

And Mr. Anderson made his famous ice-cream dessert, which is something I look forward to on birthdays.

All this meaning: I didn't mean to imply I haven't had much of a birthday celebration in that last post. I just mean I'm still expecting the one we discussed earlier. Tricia, are you getting this? :-)

Okay, I'm off to post more pics over at STILL: Life.

The Return Of STILL: Life

If you're wondering, apparently about 191 or 192 pictures is the limit that I can put on that blog... at least with what I have on the other blogs.

Thus the lack of pictures for a few weeks over there. I've put the next 10 up, and plan to put another 10 up later today (or more likely tomorrow), and another 10 up by Saturday (and that would include Saturday's). Once I'm caught up I'll just delete the oldest entry before putting a new one up.

And I'm going to get an archive set up somewhere. I've saved the comments, and figured I can just put a record up on some other free site.

What have we missed while I've been living life? Um... well, my birthday came and went. If I'm not mistaken, the actual "party" (read: small gathering of some friends and their kids for dinner and perhaps board games (okay, I'm just putting in a plug for "I hope there are board games")) is yet to come... at least, at one point there was talk of this event happening after Patrick has returned... and he has returned.

Also, if it's going to be a Saturday evening, I need to know about 10 days before so I can let the Papa know. Or the manager of the Papa. That's a message to those of you on the planning committee.

Okay, there's other stuff to write about, but I'm cold and sick and need to get ready to go to the doctor. Oh yeah, that's something else. I'm sick. Blah.

Anyway, go look at pictures.