This Really Does Change Everything

I left it all to you, my dear (handful of) readers, and (all 5) of you (plus the 5 on Facebook - or are you the same people?) who voted in my Mac or PC poll .  And what you said, in a vote of 4-1 (or 7-3, maybe) was to suffer the slings and arrows of paying an outrageous fortune, so based solely on your advice, i ran back into the arms of Apple.  (This way, if this ends badly, I can blame all of you.  And I know who 3 of you are.)  I realize that i've given the ending a bit of a surprise twist, but i realized that i could get a vastly more powerful iMac for less than a PowerBook, and the fact is, i don't really even take my laptop anywhere, so why limit myself to such a tiny screen and confining keyboard?  And there she is, in her 27 inches of minimalist powerhouse glory.  I am so in love, even if we don't yet speak the same language (Is alt now control, or alt, or that weird infinity-meets-number-key command button? Where is my Windows Explorer button?)  It's okay - hand gestures seem to be enough to get by on for now.

There's glare on the screen from the windows behind my desk, so i'll have to take more shots at night (which is generally when i use it anyway).  But my, oh my, ohhhhh myyyyy is that screen and its resolution mind-altering.  I get sucked into the screen savers like hypnotized cartoon animals whose eyes become little swirls.  For example, and this doesn't even do it justice at all, but here is what editing a photo on this thing looks like:

To give you a sense of scale, that's a full-sized keyboard (Look, Ma!  No wires!)  Then there's the fact that I finally uploaded (downloaded?) all 750 photos from Barcelona (6 weeks later) and another 800 or so stills for a stop-motion movie I'm making on making danishes from scratch (to be posted soon, although be forewarned, it's going to fall into the film noir category).  These photos are huge digital files on my Canon EOS 30D, so they take for-flipping-ever to transfer.  Normally.  On the new Light of My Life, it took approximately 1.5 seconds per photo.  This used to be about a minute per photo, I swear.  My life is forever changed.  Plus, iMovie is really fun and pretty intuitive, since I've never done movie editing in my life and put together my little film (the first 3/4 of it) in about an 30 minutes.  I even did my first guitar lesson - the E major chord - on Garage Band (my fingers still hurt 3 days later, though, so I'm not sure about my future as a singer-songwriter).  So, you'll all be happy to know that the acquisition therapy seems to be working, and I promise to post some happier things.

Which reminds me of a story (as all things do).  One day, a BFF and then-roommate of mine and i came across an interesting discovery.  After crap-on-crap weeks (possibly months) for both of us that left us each wallowing in deep and wide pools of self-pity, my friend's mother offered - nay, demanded - that we borrow her Audi TT convertible and go for a drive on what was in my memory still one of the most gorgeous summer days DC has ever had.  So, we put on cute summer dresses and made a plan to drive up and down the GW Parkway and then get cocktails at the Georgetown waterfront.  About halfway into the drive/flight, with the engine purring as the trees, the curves of the road, and the Potomac whizzed by, and with the wind in our hair, sun on our shoulders, and music in our ears, I turned to my friend with a grin from ear to ear and said "You know, money actually can buy happiness.  How can you be unhappy in this car?"  (Rumor has it that this story has made it to someone who works for Audi and may show up in some marketing campaign, so if it does, this entry will be proof that they stole it from me.  It's okay, for a TT of my own, they can have it.)

Autumn Songs

When I was growing up, I always loved autumn. I loved the way the air suddenly felt cleansed of summer's humidity, how the skies were suddenly more blue, and how all the trees burst out in infernos of red and orange. Although my leo heart belongs first and foremost to summer, being an only child, autumn meant the end of lonely days when my friends were on family road trips to exotic sounding places like Saskatoon or The Badlands. Best of all, autumn meant going back to school, which always held the promise of new classes and adventures, maybe making new friends, and growing up, which, when you're not an adult, is Priority Number One. As a kid, I would have my first day of school outfit picked out a week ahead of time and would barely sleep out of excitement and nervousness the night before, a feeling that really only left me by year three of law school. I know, I know, you're thinking I was a geek and probably a teacher's pet, the latter half of which is true and the former not too far off the mark, I suppose. As my mother was also getting her degree through much of my childhood, fall meant a new semester for her, too, and I spent a lot of time on the University of Nebraska campus as the architecture department mascot. I loved the smell of art markers, the click of mechanical pencils, the rustle of drafting paper, the way classes were give and take instead of rote learning. I couldn't wait to go to college and took every opportunity to spend more time there, so I lived for Model United Nations, which was held there and run by college students; this in turn led to me dating college students, which upped my social status with my peers, if not my parents. I was ecstatic to finally be invited to real dinners that didn't take place at shopping mall food courts and to have intelligent conversations, both of which are hard to do, I suppose, if your only income is a $10 weekly allowance and your hormones are fogging your vocabulary skills. And once I finally got to college and later to grad school, it was and wasn't everything I thought it would be - growing up was a lot harder than I'd imagined - but I can say with certainty that those years were unequivocally the most intellectually enriching of my life, and I was pushed and pulled into shapes I didn't know I could make. Most of my closest friendships were forged in the fire of late nights philosophizing about the meaning of life over bottles of wine. My time at Bryn Mawr especially very much shaped me, even if the seeds planted while there didn't fully bloom until much later, and when I think of my alma mater, I always think of the view of Rhoads Beach from my senior dorm window, with the trees in their finest fall regalia, lit behind from the sun.

Autumn was in many respects the halcyon of my youth. And passing through the arbor of autumn leaves that surround me these days (a few shown above) reminds me of one of my favorite poems, one of the few I can (almost) recite from memory, because I read it at a French poetry reading contest held at the University - one of my first forays onto the campus not associated with my mother. I chose Verlaine's Chanson d'automne at the time because I loved the sound of it and the images it conveyed, both of which have stayed with me ever since:

Les sanglots longs

Des violons

     De l'automne

Blessent mon coeur

D'une langueur

     Monotone.

Tout suffocant

Et blême, quand

     Sonne l'heure,

Je me souviens

Des jours anciens

     Et je pleure;

Et je m'en vais

Au vent mauvais

     Qui m'emporte

Deçà, delà,

Pareil à la

     Feuille morte.

There's a lot here that's lost in a literal translation, but you can find some versions here. The funny thing is that the poem is now a favorite for different, sadder reasons, namely that I am old enough now to understand what Verlaine was talking about. At 14, one has no old days to cry over, really. I think in some ways, the hardest part of being an adult is the monotony that can ensue once one chooses a career path and a hometown and is responsible for a mortgage and dealing with contractors. Whereas autumn used to mean new clothes and excitement, now it's just the leaves that change. I suppose this is different if one has school-aged children or if one is an academic by trade. But I find that where each period of my life used to be so clearly demarcated every year with the falling of the leaves, now the seasons and what I do from year to year is generally a big blur. I can tell you, for instance, where I was, when it was, and more or less what I did for every year I was in school; after that, it is hard to place any event in time. Sometimes I forget that the 1990s were now 20 years ago; half the time I can't remember how old I am. My grandparents tell me that this phenomenon only gets worse with age.

So now Chanson d'automne strikes a more haunting chord with me. Every fall reminds me of my dear friend Matthias, whom I met one Halloween and lost to leukemia three autumns later. He taught me everything I know about painting a house correctly, which he learned painting houses in Germany during summers spent visiting his father there, so when I say correctly, I really mean with a level of exacting precision bordering on obsession. He was an exceedingly patient teacher, which is why he succeeded in getting me to pay attention to the details (every single cotton-picking one of them) where so many others had failed. He would be mostly pleased with the work I've done on the addition to the house he helped me rip apart and put back together back in the beginning (although he'd have long ago fired the contractors), but he would be exasperated that I didn't dovetail the baseboard ends where they overlapped, and there are some spots on the ceiling that I should even out with a sanding sponge. He'd give me an A on the wiring and an F on the hookup to the rainbarrel on the roof, which is totally gerry-rigged and I should really paint the barrel brown so it blends in to the wall. I hear him chiding me in my head every time I try and do something half-assed, but I also hear him telling me to lighten the hell up over the whole thing and be patient that it will all get done eventually. He had a great sense of humor and adventure, and he really knew how to give adversity the finger. He made me jump swimming pool fences after midnight and go for motorcycle rides. In doing so, he taught me how to live in the moment and really appreciate the gifts life hands you. He also made a mean peach cobbler. He had zero tolerance for moping or self-pity, so I try to remember these things when I miss him, and how fall is also about Halloween (my favorite holiday), picking apples and pumpkins on farms out in the country, perfect hiking weather, and a great time to beachcomb shells at Assateague since the crowds and mosquitoes are finally gone. Fall will always be the most dramatic and beautiful, if also sentimental, season, whose soundtrack goes like this:

Sadly Symbolic

This is the tree that was given to me by the Alexandria Environmental Policy Commission and several City staff members as a thank you for helping develop the Eco-City Charter and Environmental Action Plan 2030. The Eco-City Alexandria effort has brought together people from every level of the community - from citizens of every age and income level wanting to learn more about the issues, to Virginia Tech professors, City Council members, and the dedicated members of the EPC - to put together a sort of environmental Magna Carta for our city, an effort that has already garnered major awards and is already making our city more sustainable. I don't know that my efforts truly deserve special attention, as I just happened to be the one holding the gavel during the meetings, so I jokingly think of that tree as my cat herding trophy. But the truth is that I poured my heart and soul and 2.5 years of my life into that effort (as did everyone else involved), and still believe that it will probably be the most positive thing I ever do. I am truly just happy that I got to be a part of the team. That tree actually means the world to me, both because it is the kindest and most unexpected gift I have ever received and because it came from a group of people i admire and respect immensely. As my friends and colleagues led me to this red oak with a red ribbon and gift card tied around it on the grounds of the school across from our house, I imagined it growing tall and providing shade for kids a hundred years after I am gone, and no thank you gift could be more fitting. Trees always represent life to me in all it's forms and cycles, even as they do now in fall, the most bittersweet season, when summer's last and most fiery sunset is burned into every leafy finger while the cold air whispers that winter is near. And they are the first harbinger of hope when their green buds poke out against the grey landscape to remind everyone that even the dead of winter has an end every spring. I'm probably happiest on summer days spent reading under shady canopies rustling in the breeze.

I walked by my tree seeking its solace today, a gloomy day for anyone who truly cares about the environment, but where gold and crimson leaves should be there are instead parched and barren branches. Every other tree managed to survive the drought but mine. It's really just too symbolic of the state of my heart right now, which feels like there is far too little compassion or love left in the world, and that trying to make the planet a kinder, gentler, happier place is essentially a sisyphean task. I mean honestly, what is so funny about peace, love, and understanding?

RIP my little tree. :(

Je T'aime...Moi Non Plus (Le Remix)

Oh, Apple, je t'aime. I have loved you since I was doing cutting-edge BASIC programming on the Apple II in my gifted class, circa 1980 (50 IF A$ "Yes" THEN GOTO 120; 120 PRINT "You are TOTALLY AWESOME", U$) . That was pretty shrewd marketing on your part, hooking me on your drugs at age 8. But I was willing; you were so cool. If it had been me buying the computer instead of my father, we would never have bothered with the two Trash-80s (although I think there is now a certain cache to having actually owned the one with the cassette tape drive), nor would we have thrown money down the drain with that Amiga 500, but you know, the old dudes were hooked in their youth on IBM.

Though largely a slave to the Macintosh side of the college computer lab, once free to spend my (parents') money on the computer of my choice (as opposed to the obligation I/my father had to replace my friend's half-typewriter/half-computer in Paris after my confusion as to whether or not it needed a 110-220 converter (it did) led to its immediate and fiery demise), I ran straight back into your loving arms my senior year of college. My trusty PowerBook Duo with docking station saw me through an 80 page thesis on how democracy and Islam were inherently compatible (as would surely play out in Algeria), preparation for oral philosophy exams (requiring relearning and regurgitation of 4 years of study), and then three years of law school.

But then, entry into the legal field required working with Word Perfect. And while I maintain, to this day, that WP is a vastly superior product to the crap Microsoft cobbled together in an extremely poor imitation thereof, the fact is that you and Corel never got along. And thus, I was finally required to cross over to the dark side of PCism. I'm so sorry, Apple, you know I didn't want to do it, but you made me. Had you been a less belligerent company regarding software, or not been so half-assed about allowing me to flip between operating systems, I never would have left you. Your ridiculous and spiteful ways regarding Microsoft have always left those of us who love you unable to work with you. And now you're doing it with Google, too, you idiots. J'accuse, Apple!

Still, I cannot escape my addiction to you. The fact is, you are the most beautiful thing with two USB ports. (Who needs 3, really?) Growing up with a modern architect who insisted on all white walls and no knick knacks, of course I love your minimalist design. In short, I was born to love you, 15" Macbook Pro, with your beautiful (recycled!) aluminum unibody and glass construction, the magical Multi-Touch Trackpad, backlit keyboard with ergonomic keys, brilliant HD display, and high-end graphics card. And you are Energy Star rated, with an 8-hour battery life (if I'm not running anything). I really, really, really want you.


And the truth is, I have, with the advent of the new laptop system at work, been freed from my absolute need to have a PC at home. And even though our new laptop system came with a new tech system that no longer supports Lotus Notes on Macs, the truth is that I have this old Acer here that I can use if for some reason I'm working from home and didn't lug home that 10 lb piece of crap Dell laptop the USG provided me. And to be honest, I don't know which I hated more - the old HP I had (which was produced under Carly Fiorina's tenure there and does nothing to inspire any confidence whatsoever in her ability to produce a useful, working product, much less state government), or the Acer I now have. Why Acer felt the need to partition my 80 GB hard drive into two unmergeable 40 GB drives, thus leaving me insufficient memory to run anything, is beyond me. People say, "d, d, whenever WILL you put up the pictures of [the house/the trip/your really cute kitty]" and I have to reply, "Well, I've been trying to upload them for 17 days now and I'm still only halfway there!!" And then there is the whole nightmare of trying to run Adobe Photoshop when your computer is essentially powered by a really tired, old, fat hamster. I'm so tired of the random BSOD periods that are apparently related to the graphics card that has never properly worked, which take over my computer for entire days at a time and then disappear as if there's no problem at all. I'd like to be able to run my iPhone on my own computer (instead of my spouse's) for a change, since there isn't enough room for Windows, Word, Photoshop, and iTunes on this doorstop-cum-laptop. Not that I don't appreciate my spouse's generosity, but I'm tired of the eyerolls I get when I ask him to download my favorite ELO or No Doubt CD, and I'd rather just cut off his ability to sneak in the entire Morrissey catalogue in the (vain) hope that I will learn to worship The Moz. Of course, if I turn back into your cold embrace, Apple, I know that I'll have to fend off his theft of you, just like when he railed against you for years but then promptly stole my 2Gen iPod.

So, I'm ready, Apple. I'm ready, but it's the extra $800 I'd have to spend to own you that has come between us. I've priced the Runner Up (the Vaio), Miss Congeniality (the new Samsung), and the Ugly Duckling (ThinkPad), and in order to get what I am told I should probably have for what I want to do (mostly photo work, running my iPhone, working from home once in awhile, and maybe some Garage Band action): 8GB RAM, 500 GB hard drive, i5 processor, 15" HD non-glare screen, and MS Office, everyone else is considerably less than you. No, they aren't made from recycled materials, no they aren't as pretty, their batteries are shite, they aren't as energy-efficient, they don't run as well, and they don't have your magic Multi-Touch, and I know these soft variables do have value but they are so hard to quantify, especially when you're still trying to pay your contractor to finish your house. It's just that I'm not sure your extras add up, especially since I'm still going to have to go track down some student or teacher willing to buy me a copy of Photoshop CS5 Extended and then I'm going to have to come up with tuition money to figure out how to use it.

I know, I know, you're reminding me of my earlier post about buying cheap crap and asking me to put my money where my consumer and aesthetic moral mouth is. But really, are you even worth the extra money or are you just trying to gouge me the way you always do, you evil, heartless computer pusher? You are the Ligne Roset of computers. But still...you'd look soooooo good on my desk.

Whatever is a girl to do?

Je t'aime (moi non plus)

Oh, Ligne Roset, je t'aime!

Stem Entertainment Console, you have stolen my heart.

I long to run my fingers over the curve of your walnut, the gloss of your lacquer.

I want to worship daily your perfect dimensions, your gorgeous form.

I have looked so long for you, over the internet and through U Street furniture stores.

You must be mine, you simply must...I will have no other!

You are $4,077.00 on sale...je te deteste, Ligne Roset.

Bread and Roses

After saving up a year's worth of vacation (and home improvement injuries to body and soul), I have finally taken a real vacation - three whole weeks off! (You'll never see an American strike over having to work a few extra years, good little drones that we are!) This long absence is in part why there has been no news on the home front; in solidarity with the French, who I can't help but love for being one of the last populations willing to hold its entire society hostage to fight for a culture of leisure, and also with the perhaps more noble and certainly more justified textile workers of the 1900s whose protests are immortalized in poem and my Bryn Mawr class song, I have gone on strike. My life shall not be sweated from birth until life closes - give me bread, but give me roses!!

And so, even though I've been home a month now, I'm still (mostly) on home improvement strike and instead of amusing you with my latest construction calamity, I am taking you, fair reader(s?), on a tour of my new favorite U.S. city - Portland, Oregon - also known as The City of Roses, and home to amazing food, excellent beer, stellar design, sustainable living, and, most importantly, the company of near and dear friends. There is also, apparently, a stubborn libertarian nudist streak (we saw bumper stickers lauding the joys of naked hiking, jogging, and biking in our few days there), which only adds to its charm from a visitor's perspective. In short, despite the weather, I would put Portland ahead of even New Orleans as what America can be when we take the best of what the world has come up with and make it uniquely ours.

In many respects, Portland shares a similar feel to DC - it is based on the confluence of the Willamette (Will-AH-mette, by the way) and Columbia Rivers, upstream of the Pacific Ocean by a couple of hours. Portland proper has about 500,000 residents, but the greater area is about 2.2 million people, which is a lot bigger than I had thought. The city itself is superbly planned, with incredible public transit (free to all in the main 3-mile downtown area, and each rail car and bus equipped with bike hooks/racks) and bike lanes everywhere (I give the Portlanders extra kudos for biking in all that rain). There is not only recycling but also city-wide composting. Portland is the U.S.' most sustainable city and one of the top 10 in the world (some say #1, some say #2, but to be totally fair, I think Freiburg, Germany has been wrongly dismissed in the lists - not only can you basically not have a car in certain neighborhoods, but not even Portland has laws limiting how much heat can leak from your house). Green space abounds throughout the city, with Forest Park, the largest wilderness city park in the U.S., covering 5,000 acres, and the lovely Washington Park, perched on a hill overlooking the city and home to the International Rose Test Garden. Apparently all that rain makes for good rose growing. I agree:

Can't you just smell these? White roses have been my lifelong favorite, although after seeing the beauty and smelling the most perfectly delicate perfume - an almost half rose/half lavender scent - of the pale purply-pink ones below, I think there is at least a tie. There were so many unique and interesting specimens, it was hard to pick a favorite.

In addition to the amazing Test Garden, there is also the most lovely Chinese garden I have ever come across, the Lan Su Chinese Garden right in the middle of downtown. I am a huge fan of Japanese gardens and had never really seen a formal Chinese garden, but there are lots of similarities:

In general, P-town has a pretty funky artsy industrial feel to the place, and they've done a lot to revive old warehouses. Everywhere you go, there seems to be either cool art and/or great design.

Portland also has an incredible music scene whose sound seems to match the weather. If i'd included a soundtrack to this post, it would feature The Shins, The Decemberists, Blitzen Trapper, and my very beloved M. Ward. Also, keep your eyes open for the debut of Aquavit! Our friend's band practice space is perhaps the coolest one ever, housed in a former industrial warehouse and complete with center stage free for any of the bands to use for concerts, and guitar strings in the vending machine:

Then there's the food and the beer. Portland has nearly 30 microbreweries, the best pinot noir in the country, and generally has fabulous food everywhere. Best of all were the prices, which were usually the equivalent of taco night in Alexandria, no matter how nice the place. (This might have something to do with Portland's 25% unemployment rate.) The city also has a burgeoning foodcart scene, complete with every kind of food you can think of, even if it wasn't one you thought of actually eating:

But the pies at this place looked pretty awesome:

They even best DC with having one of a handful of US Teuscher chocolate boutiques (one of my desert island foods is a Teuscher champagne truffle)...

But as usual, they were closed at an absurdly early hour (i have a growing collection of photos of closed Teuscher stores). I guess the Swiss keep Bahnhofstrasse operating hours, no matter where in the world they are.

If you're into Asian food & architecture and keep late hours, Biwa is a dream come true. Kobe beef sliders with sake and seaweed salad at 11pm. It's also housed in some sort of architecture school, so even the bathrooms are uber cool.

While technically outside of Portland, I also have to say that the best wood-fired pizza I have ever had was at Solstice Wood Fire Cafe in Bingen, WA. You may not have thought blackberries, mascarpone, and prosciutto belonged on pizza, but you would be oh so very wrong.

There was also quite the taco scene, much to the delight of my spouse, who is planning to apply for the Head Lab Researcher/Taste Tester position here. If he gets it, I expect we'll become a bi-coastal couple:

And then, there is Broder, home to the best bloody mary on the planet, made with fine Danish aquavit and homemade pickled vegetables instead of a celery stick. I asked for the recipe, but given their total silence, I'd say it's a trade secret.

Although perhaps my favorite meal of all was the lovely breakfast our friends made for us at their beautiful bungalow apartment in Irvington, complete with home-grown tomatoes:

As well as being a great city, Portland is surrounded by natural beauty, including the Columbia Gorge, where the two rivers cleave the Cascade mountains into a swath of cliffs and waterfalls, and which was one of the last stops for Lewis and Clark in their nearly 3 year ordeal/exploration of the United States. Multnomah Falls, the most famous of the string of waterfalls along the Gorge, is the second highest in the U.S. at 620'.

Bridal Veil Falls is another really famous fall in the Gorge:

But the clear favorite was Latourelle Falls, whose scale and colors defy explanation.

What is amazing is the scale - here is a shot with the guys waving from behind the falls (the two red dots):

After I returned to work, I was walking down a hall in a distant part of the building, and passed a framed poster for National Public Lands Day that has probably hung on the wall since the 1990s, and suddenly realized that it was almost this very shot.

Sadly, four days in Portland just isn't nearly enough time to take it all in. As it is, we missed Pine State Biscuits by 30 minutes. But that's okay; aside from the best reason to visit (two of our favorite people on the planet), it's always good to save something for the next time.

(Stay tuned for Part 2 of our Western Exploration, where we hit the San Juan Islands, the Olympic National Park, and Whistler, Canada. As soon as I sort through the 700 photos, I'll get a few up on the blog.)

Uh Oh, It's Magic

There it is, my 2:48am Victory Festbier to celebrate the painting of the kitchen. The first coat anyway. Given that i didn't really start until 10pm, and had to do a little sanding and all the cutting first, a 2:30 finish isn't too bad.

As you can see, it's a pretty dramatic change from the terra cotta walls of yore. We went with a Martha Stewart (shudder) paint called Heavy Goose for both the new room and the kitchen, which has engendered lots of jokes. Where do they come up with these names? What is it, exactly, about this particular shade of wintry white that made Martha think of some fat feathery fowl? Maybe she was making foie gras that day.

I'll do a proper photoshoot when it's all done, which you should expect sometime in 2012.

And now, the bad news:


Last weekend, I finished painting the new room, and was putting in the trim for the recessed lights when I discovered to my horror that only half of them work - the ones now dangling on the left side above. The right side doesn't work at all. First, I tried to troubleshoot: different bulbs, checking the connecting wires inside, etc. Nothing was wrong. I spent some time on the web and read a suggestion that a neutral wire was probably not connected somewhere, which made sense, although it had passed inspection and I had been very diligent about the connections, but thought maybe the drywall guys had inadvertently knocked something loose. The problem is that now that the ceiling is finished, searching for the loose connection meant ripping open holes to find it. So I did the logical thing and put my head down on the counter and wept bitterly.

Once I got my wits back together, I came back to the lights with dogged determination and the electric tester and found that all the boxes were getting power, so it likely wasn't a missing neutral connection. But mysteriously, not only are the hot (black) wires hot, but all the neutral (white) wires in the nonworking lights are also hot, whereas the working side are properly hot and neutral. This is bad, obviously. It's also really a mystery, because i wired all the boxes in a line, so i have no earthly idea how half of them would be in a different electrical state; maybe I had accidentally screwed up the wiring in the box somewhere. I consulted my wiring book and learned to my great relief that wiring in recessed boxes can actually be fixed from the hole- you just remove the shield that holds the trim and there is an access panel that can be opened from inside the box (a good idea). I was beginning to rue our decision to go with the 3" lights as i searched for a screwdriver short enough to fit in there, and once the trim pieces were out, it was still fortunate that i have such small hands, as getting those plates off the inside required squeezing your hand and wrist in there and feeling around for the latch, because there's not enough room for your hand and your eyes. There's a market for women electricians here, for sure.

Sadly, almost, my wiring was perfect. The fixture connections were fine, too. So no obvious solution exists. I thought about the switches and took all of those out to see if something had happened on that end - our electrician had actually done the switches and half of the wiring (including running power to the switch boxes and the last switch leg for the run), so I thought perhaps he had wired them incorrectly. They're on a 4-way switch, which is sadly not as kinky or fun as it sounds, but is definitely as complicated to organize. (Also, like all things relating to construction it makes no sense - a 4-way switch means you have 3 switches controlling one light/set of lights. A 3-way switch is actually two switches. A 2 x 4 piece of lumber is actually 1.75 x 3.75, the 2 x 2 mosaic tile is actually 1.85 x 1.85. Etc., etc.) Anyway, I pulled all the switches out and realized quickly that I have no clue what is happening in those switch boxes. Was it the traveler or the common...or the power in? I couldn't tell from the tangle before me. I am not, it turns out, an electrician.

These kinds of wiring fiascos (and I've had several in this project) remind me of a story my mother told me about the electrical engineers she went to architectural school with, who, when discussing radio frequencies and how they work joked that what FM really stands for is "Fucking Magic."

I am calling the magician.

[PS - I think this diagram sums up my experience pretty well.]