New Year's Resolutions

My best guy calls them "resolvers".  It is rare that he is unkind, but for those people who show up at the gym right after New Year's Day (and generally last only a few weeks), he only scoffs.

My resolution? It's not about the gym. Actually, it's not even a New Year's thing. But I have been promising and promising to "do something" about lighting up the dining room for years.

We have loved the old fixture for at least twenty years. And beautiful though it was, it never put out much light (37.5 watts to be precise). Back then, we were younger and could see. So we lit candles and turned every dinner into a romantic evening.

Unfortunately, now that everyone's eyesight has gotten worse, it's mostly become just plain old dark. "Darker than the inside of God's hat," is how I have described the dining room.

But this holiday season, I spent some time in my studio (hard to do since there is so much junk to step over and around). But wedged in at my table, I listened to Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being and got to work.

It took forever. Designing, planning, cutting papers, fitting the mica panels - amazing how much you can forget in so little time. And switching out the fixture was a pain in the backside, but easier than I expected. Then again, I expected to blow up the house. Or burn it down, whichever came first.

But the real question is: shall we continue to light candles every night?

160 watts