Here We Go Again

Some of you may remember a couple years ago when I had a small issue with some outdoor Christmas lights. For those of you who may not have been readers at the time, I'll sum it up for you - I wanted to upgrade to bigger lights on a couple of trees in the yard but only scanned the box which contained the lights, which said that while the lights only came in strands of 25, they could handle up to 60. I assumed that meant 60 strands, because what good would a 60 light-limit do when that isn't a multiple of 25? Well, it turns out it was just 60 lights and the fuses in the strands kept blowing after about 30 seconds. It was pretty frustrating. Getting enough lights to cover the tree resulted in multiple trips to the hardware store, after which I was forced to jerry-rig a system with an outdoor power strip with no more than two connected strands heading out from it. As you can imagine, it did not come out looking nearly as professional as I had imagined in my head. The results had bothered me for a couple of years, so as soon as the strands started to show signs of wear, with the blue bulbs fading to the point they were essentially clear (Shocking, I know. Who would have thought these lights, which came in a poorly-designed box would have also been pretty unreliable?), I decided it was time for an upgrade. This time I made sure I could string multiple strands together if it came to it. Unfortunately, this time that wasn't my problem.

Now, you may be thinking that this is awfully early to be worrying about Christmas lights. Normally I would agree with you, but this came as a special request. Additionally, these back lights are the only ones I will be doing for a couple more weeks. This time I bought a strand of 100 lights on a 99-foot cord. At first glance, both of those numbers sounds like a lot. After all the tree isn't that big. The plan was to go all the way up and back down, eliminating the need for the power strip by connecting directly to the extension cord over to the next tree and I thought I would make it quite easily. However, as I was pulling the old lights off the tree, I noticed there were 6, 25-foot strands. That's 50 more feet of lights than I now had and suddenly I was worried I was going to come up short. Still, I told myself that wasn't a real problem, because the old strands had to go back to the power cord at the bottom of the tree, which mean I wasn't able to spread them out as I wanted. Since this was just going to be one long strand, by my calculations I should be able to spread the lights out more efficiently to cover all the space. Turns out, I'm still not a math major because I didn't even make it all the way to the top of the tree.

[Sidebar: Finding out the hard way that 99 feet doesn't cover nearly as much as you think it does, I headed back to the hardware store. I know that sounds bad, but this turned out to be one of those moments when the universe was looking out for me. As I had been unrolling that first strand of lights I noticed that it didn't come with the spare bulbs which had been promised. While not a big deal at the time, I still would have liked to know they were around in case of an emergency. In going back to get the second strand I was at least smart enough to go back to the same store and to make sure I wouldn't have more of the compatibility problems which you really don't expect to have with something as simple as Christmas lights, I also wanted to get more of the same brand of lights. In the same box as where I bought the first strand yesterday was a pack of extra lights, which I can only assume were from my strand and had fallen out. So, while going back to the hardware store was not in the original plan, at least by having to do it I got the spare lights and fuses should anything happen. I'm going to chalk it up to karma, because it is easier than admitting I'm really awful at judging distances.]

Now that I knew I had enough lights to make it back down the tree I set about finishing hanging my new lights. Because of the limited nature of the previous light set-up I never made it to the top branches of the tree, and I wanted to make damn sure I got the new ones around those branches, as putting up a strand of lights I could leave while the tree grew was pretty much the whole point of this entire experiment. Well, I may not know math but I do know trees, because this tree is definitely taller than when I hung these lights up 3 years ago. Whereas last time I was able to just hang them with a ladder and tossing the lights over a couple of branches, this time became a process that featured me breaking out not only a ladder, but two grabber arm extender and walking stick to make sure I could actually get the lights up on the highest of branches. (I hate heights. Seriously, what has gotten into me this year?) I gave the lights a quick trial and so far, so good. Believe me, no one is happier about the thought of not having to get back up a ladder than me. I can only hope these lights last a lot longer than the ones I just took off, because at the rate that tree is growing the only way I'll be touching those top branches again with a cherry-picker or a chainsaw.