It's just not a good time for elecronics around us!
It started last week when my sewing machine went legs up leaving me to struggle on using my spare machine, then, one of the strip-lights in the sewing room started flickering and stopped coming on except a vague glow at either end of the tube (unless I fiddled with the starter thingie and then it would come on for a while).
I tracked down a replacement starter thingie on Saturday... but it worked only marginally better than the first (the light stayed on for longer after I fiddled with it before strting to flicker and need retwiddling).
Then we sat down to watch last Monday's recording of the final episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures, and Friday's night's episode of Ugly Betty and discovered that our video recorder has somehow lost the ability to record sound.... the picture's fine and it plays back sound fine on pre-recorded tapes and tv recordings from before last Monday but won't record sound with anything now.
So, Sunday morning we swapped the videorecorder from the sewing room into the livingroom, trashing the sewing room in the process (getting all the wires and plugs disconnected involved emptying and dismantling the IKEA units they ran behind). Tom had started doing this before I realized what he was doing and had a chance to stop him... So he set up the swapped video in the livingroom while I set about blitzing the sewing room.
Then on, Sunday afternoon, all the lights in the house flickered and the ones in the sewing room went off for a minute or so.
When they came back on, the dodgy striplight (the middle one of the three in the sewing room) wouldn't stop flickering at all, then the one at the end closest to the window joined in. More fiddling with starter-thingies ensued and I left the middle one disconnected and moved the new starter thingie to the strip by the window... Where it set up in the now-familar pattern of coming on if fiddled with and lasting a little while before starting to flicker and need retwiddling.
When the last remaining strip light started to flicker, I gave up, removed the starter from the strip at the window end of the room, and fetched a desklamp from the spare bedroom to light that end of the room. The remaining striplight (the one at the door end of the room) seemed to settle then and I frantically got on with working on Lissa's dress while I had light.
At 6pm, I stopped sewing so we could watch the repeat of The Sarah Jane Adventures episode from last Monday (our last chance to catch it unless they re-run the series or release it on DVD). Just as the opening credits finished, BAM! out goes the power.
Our side of the street, around the corners at either end of our street, and just over half way along those streets (on our side) the houses and streetlights were in darkness, the rest still had power (except the house immediately opposite ours, which was also blacked out).
Luckily, being re-enactors, we had candles and lanterns to hand and knew where the matches were. Having checked the neighbours were OK for candles (and happened to arrive at the front door of one house exactly as the young woman living there was coming outside to check the extent of the power-cut, causing her to scream in terror as I appeared out of the darkness in front of her), we ascertined that, unlike some of the neighbours, we still had a working 'phone, we gave up on the idea of cooking supper (the gas was on, but the electric ignition wasn't) and ordered Indian food.
I called Lissa (oreouk) to let her know about the power-cut halting work on her dress. Phil (demoneyes) answered the 'phone and as soon as Lissa heard him say my name and, "You have a power-cut." I heard her laughing in the background. Good thing she had an laternate outfit planned for the party on Tuesday, just in case the dress wasn't finished.
We were without power for around 2 hours.... it came back just in time for us to see the repeat of the Ugly Betty episode recorded without sound, but Sarah Jane I'm afraid, is lost to us.
I finished the bit of sewing I'd been in the middle of, flickering lights making it difficult to move on to anything more detailed, then we tunred in for an early night...
...for all the good it did me, I barely slept. Again. No idea why.
I tracked down a replacement starter thingie on Saturday... but it worked only marginally better than the first (the light stayed on for longer after I fiddled with it before strting to flicker and need retwiddling).
Then we sat down to watch last Monday's recording of the final episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures, and Friday's night's episode of Ugly Betty and discovered that our video recorder has somehow lost the ability to record sound.... the picture's fine and it plays back sound fine on pre-recorded tapes and tv recordings from before last Monday but won't record sound with anything now.
So, Sunday morning we swapped the videorecorder from the sewing room into the livingroom, trashing the sewing room in the process (getting all the wires and plugs disconnected involved emptying and dismantling the IKEA units they ran behind). Tom had started doing this before I realized what he was doing and had a chance to stop him... So he set up the swapped video in the livingroom while I set about blitzing the sewing room.
Then on, Sunday afternoon, all the lights in the house flickered and the ones in the sewing room went off for a minute or so.
When they came back on, the dodgy striplight (the middle one of the three in the sewing room) wouldn't stop flickering at all, then the one at the end closest to the window joined in. More fiddling with starter-thingies ensued and I left the middle one disconnected and moved the new starter thingie to the strip by the window... Where it set up in the now-familar pattern of coming on if fiddled with and lasting a little while before starting to flicker and need retwiddling.
When the last remaining strip light started to flicker, I gave up, removed the starter from the strip at the window end of the room, and fetched a desklamp from the spare bedroom to light that end of the room. The remaining striplight (the one at the door end of the room) seemed to settle then and I frantically got on with working on Lissa's dress while I had light.
At 6pm, I stopped sewing so we could watch the repeat of The Sarah Jane Adventures episode from last Monday (our last chance to catch it unless they re-run the series or release it on DVD). Just as the opening credits finished, BAM! out goes the power.
Our side of the street, around the corners at either end of our street, and just over half way along those streets (on our side) the houses and streetlights were in darkness, the rest still had power (except the house immediately opposite ours, which was also blacked out).
Luckily, being re-enactors, we had candles and lanterns to hand and knew where the matches were. Having checked the neighbours were OK for candles (and happened to arrive at the front door of one house exactly as the young woman living there was coming outside to check the extent of the power-cut, causing her to scream in terror as I appeared out of the darkness in front of her), we ascertined that, unlike some of the neighbours, we still had a working 'phone, we gave up on the idea of cooking supper (the gas was on, but the electric ignition wasn't) and ordered Indian food.
I called Lissa (oreouk) to let her know about the power-cut halting work on her dress. Phil (demoneyes) answered the 'phone and as soon as Lissa heard him say my name and, "You have a power-cut." I heard her laughing in the background. Good thing she had an laternate outfit planned for the party on Tuesday, just in case the dress wasn't finished.
We were without power for around 2 hours.... it came back just in time for us to see the repeat of the Ugly Betty episode recorded without sound, but Sarah Jane I'm afraid, is lost to us.
I finished the bit of sewing I'd been in the middle of, flickering lights making it difficult to move on to anything more detailed, then we tunred in for an early night...
...for all the good it did me, I barely slept. Again. No idea why.