And 1400 Miles Goes By ...

So it turns out I'll easily have 1500 miles in before leaving for RAGBRAI (less than 2 weeks away). I've not been feeling well this past weekend (starting on the 4th) and I think it's just that I have been neglecting sleep. With Scott here and watching TV stuff and then I like to read in the evening so I think for almost two weeks I still tended to get up pretty early in the morning resulting in only about a 5 hour per night average for sleep. Anyway, feeling much better today as I try to keep my schedule if possible, but work on getting to bed earlier (11pm is my goal).

Did an interesting project last weekend (which I didn't really feel like doing but my neighbor, Jim, was available to help and so we got it done). I've always had a ceiling fan in the kitchen but the crazy guy that wired it didn't run separate switches for the light and the fan. Consequently, leaving the fan always on, I was forced to use the pull string switch on the fixture to turn on the light. Or, if I wanted the switch to run the light, I was forced to use the other pull string on the fixture to run the fan ... what a pain! The end result was that I rarely used the fan (since, most of the time, I simply want to use the overhead light in the kitchen). Well, I looked into what it would take to run wiring up there for the fan and it's a real pain to even get into that area of the attic. There's almost no overhead room up there. Anyway, becoming discouraged, I stopped looking at it for a long time. Then I was at Lowe's the other day and saw this remote control fan switch gizmo. I had to search for awhile to find "just the right one" that would work as a wall switch replacement and that did *not* require separate batteries (I hate replacing batteries all the time). So that's what Jim and I installed on Saturday. It's soooo cool. I now have a neat little switch on the wall where I push a button to turn on the light and have a choice of 3 fan speed buttons (and, of course, "off"). Very nice, and no crazy wiring was required plus no extraneous batteries were needed.

One drawback occurs if you have Compact Florescent Lighting (CFL) as all of the remotes I could find (even online) had a dimmer capability with the light control and the box says it will not work with CFL bulbs. Two comments on this: first, it *does* work with standard CFL bulbs if you do *not* engage the dimmer function. Figuring that's hard to be consistent about (especially if a guest in the home ever runs the light switch), I located some "dimmable" CFL bulbs. They are (even more) expensive, but if you want to add this remote capability and you've been considering replacing the standard bulbs in your ceiling fan, add these to your thought processes: 1, defer replacing the standard bulbs right away (because they'll work with the dimmer) or, 2, spring for the extra bucks and get the dimmable CFL variety (I was able to locate some only with an online search). Finally, this is a project that requires 4 hands when reinstalling the ceiling fan so make sure you have some help for that part. So if you've ever had this type of ceiling fan issue, stop in at Lowe's and see if this solution works for you ... if it does, it will make things much nicer in your life.

Well, I'm feeling like I should relax a bit as the temperature climbs into the upper 80's here ... still not feeling the need to turn on the air conditioner, though. Maybe I'll get by until at least the end of the month. H-mmm, sometime I need to get my other TV set up downstairs as it's really much, much cooler down there and I can also sleep in the guest bedroom there when it gets so hot and humid at night.

Later ...