no ordinary bulb

Monday morning, as I ate my cliff bar and trolled the interweb, the kitchen light (the only light on at the time) finally gave out. It's been getting weaker and weaker in the last couple of months, and in the wee hours of the morning it went kaput. Charrow managed to squeeze in a trip to the hardware store to get a replacement light (it's no ordinary bulb), but the kitchen remains dark. According to the Super, the problem isn't the bulb, it's the [insert very important word that he couldn't remember HERE]. We have to go buy said important piece and have him install it if we can't figure it out ourselves.

Last night, I cooked a dish of cumin black beans by the light of my camping headlamp (who needs candles when you've got pinpointed LED at your disposal?) The night before that, I made a stir fry with cilantro peanut sauce by headlamp. And in a few minutes, I will go wash the dishes, yes, by head lamp (running water under LED looks very futuristic/CGI-ish).

Whenever you lose a convenience that is so completely ingrained in your routine*, it takes awhile for the reflexes to stop firing. Several times now I've approached the dark kitchen and flicked the switch only to be mildly outraged at the stubborn darkness. But I'm getting the hang of it faster than I did when the radio in my car wouldn't work. For about 6 months, the radio in my Honda was hibernating (not dead, so much as just not on) because I couldn't find the security code** that would unlock the sleeping music box. Out of sheer laziness, I took to using my ipod while driving instead of going to the Honda dealer to get the code. The habit of turning on the radio was not an easy one to phase out of my physical lexicon. Even towards the end of my radio free period, whenever I found myself ipod-less and stuck in traffic, I would take a jab at the radio button to make the traffic go away. No dice.

Now I'm thinking, maybe this whole kitchen light thing isn't a problem. Maybe what we should do instead of fixing it, is order charrow a headlamp so that we can both function in our makeshift wilderness while we cook meals that will keep us in tupperware during this ridiculously busy time.

*this post was originally supposed to about the pitfalls of autopilot and how we should try to be more conscious of our actions, but I got sidetracked by the novelty of my headlamp.

** Honda's have a security feature that requires you to enter a code whenever the power source for the radio is turned off. This is supposed to make the radio inoperable in the event of theft. It also makes the radio inoperable in the event of routine maintenance work that requires disconnecting the battery.