Sun, Snow, And Fixing Things Myself

It was a beautiful sunny day yesterday, the third in a row.  Here's a view from the University.

Although I did take my camera to the repair shop this week, I decided to try to fix my own headlight.  The manual helped me get the right bulb.  But what it looks like in the book and what it looks like under the hood are two different things.  Here's the book view:

 Here's what it actually looked like.

 It says to take off the cap that twists.  OK, I was able to figure that much out. And it's off in the picture.   But then it says to pull the wire connection out.  I could see the wires - they aren't shown in the book.  When I try to do the obvious and it doesn't work easily, I worry that I might be doing it wrong and if I try harder I might break something.  I tried to pull the wires connection, but it wasn't moving.  After looking at things several times and finding a head lamp to see it better, I just pulled that black part and it finally came out.

Then that wire thing - #2 in the picture.  Pull down, it says.  (The actual picture is looking down at the parts at issue.)  Well, after lots of head scratching I finally figured out that the wire loop at the bottom of the picture locks the light in place and it pulls out of the white part and pops open so the light can be pulled out.  Maybe figured out is the wrong term.  I played with it, and it just happened.  No real figuring on my part.  Pure trial and error.

From there it was easy.  Take the new bulb out of the package - careful not to touch the bulb itself - and pull the old one out and put the new one in.  Then reconnect the wire that holds the bulb tight.  Then reconnect the colored wires and screw on the cap.  Turn on the engine.  Turn on the lights.  Presto.  It works.

The sun shining through the windows yesterday also screamed loudly that our windows were pretty dirty.  With winter coming soon, I decided to get some of them cleaned up a bit.  A few years ago I bought a window cleaning kit with a nice gadget for scrubbing the windows, some cleaner (a spoonful per gallon), a squeegee, and a pole.  Five windows looked much better in under 30 minutes.  Only a few windows can be opened this way allowing me to clean from inside.


And just now, J called my attention to the fact that it has started to snow.

We're headed to the chamber music concert at the UAA Fine Arts building tonight.  One of the new faculty members in my group will be playing the Bach cello suite, one of my favorites.  7:30pm.  Other faculty string players will perform as well.

Mt. Ash berries with fresh snow