It's Sunday, and I'm again looking out on a snowy landscape. It's really cold -- about ten degrees, with a below-zero windchill -- but there's only about half an inch of snow on the ground with no more expected. The sun's out now, so it's bright. We don't have anywhere we have to be, but I have a stack of things to grade and we still need to get the living room in some kind of order. There's always something to do at Orchard Ranch.
Let me tell you about these little stinkers.
I came across these at the Big Box Retailer down the street a few weeks before Christmas, and they struck me as something that could be useful. I could use a strand to light up the Christmas wreath that I had planned to hang on the door, or do something inside the house that was mildly festive. I ended up doing neither because we had to travel to San Diego, but I did take two sets out of their packages, put batteries in them, and stuffed them into an empty glass oil lamp -- how pretty! Then I discovered a ton of uses for them on Pinterest. Finally, I noticed that they can operate on their own timers -- if you turn them onto "Timer" at midnight, they will switch themselves off six hours later. The next day, they will turn themselves on at midnight again. Oh!, I thought, that's great, I can switch on the Christmas Wreath in the late afternoon and it will turn itself off around bedtime. I made a mental note for next year.
When the Emperor's eye problems became evident, we discussed installing some night lights to help him navigate the house if he had to get up for any reason. We'd had a night light in the bathroom of our rental homes, but here we hadn't put them in because there was no plug for them. Then, I remembered my tiny lights. On at midnight, off at sunrise. Voy-lah.
I dug up this little star-shaped jar that a former student had given us as a wedding present (it originally came full of beans, with a packet of spice and a recipe for soup that by the way was delicious), and now it lights up our nights.
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