Let there be light, again.

  Last week I flipped on the living room fluorescent lights.  The lights instead of lighting, did their end-of-life thing, blinking and glowing and refusing to light up.  So I went down to Franconia Hardware to buy new tubes.  The existing tubes were showing black burn marks on their ends.  Awfulness.  Mike Ford down at Franconia told me they had stopped making real fluorescent tubes three years ago.  Some how I missed that bit of lefty-greenie aggression.  I'd heard about the war on 100 watt light bulbs, but some how I missed the war on  40 watt fluorescent tubes.  The new tubes are only 32 watts, a fantastic saving of eight whole watts per tube, but they don't work in the regular fixtures. 
  So I went out to a real electrical supply house to buy four new dependable new style fixtures.  $32 a fixture, less tubes.  He only had 3 fixtures, when I needed four, but he promised to deliver up to my place the next day. Not too shabby.  
  So next day, I started in replacing four fixtures.  It was a fine summer day, in the 90's. Good daylight  so I could see what I was doing.  I'm old school, I still use a Yankee screwdriver instead of those cute battery drill-drivers. Got the first two old fixtures down, got the new ones up.  What with one thing or another, it was 3:30 when I was done.  Decided to leave the other two fixtures for  tomorrow. 
   The new lights are nice and bright, and whiter than the old "cool white" tubes.
   By tomorrow evening the whole job ought to be done.