In which Rolanni solicits advice and assistance

[rolanni]

At 4:47 this evening, it was pitch dark on the outside of the house -- a circumstance made more dire by the fact that it was raining.

This had the not-exactly-unexpected-result of making me regret the demise of the reading lamp even more than I already did -- and, believe me, my sorrow on that front is non-trivial, mostly because I am sick to death of buying lamps that promise Forever and keep dying after a couple years. Dernit, I want a lamp I can have a Lasting Relationship with. A Forever Lamp.

So, advice: Where/How can I acquire a decent reading lamp? I can't spend a gazillion dollars, but considering the amount of money I've wasted on these consumptive brass things over the last five or six years, I'm perfectly willing to spend a bit of cash to get something that's gonna be able to keep up with me for years to come.


And! Assistance: Who is going to a convention or a book fair, or belongs to a reading group, has a relationship with a bookstore manager (or, yanno, is a bookstore manager) -- and can take some Carousel Tides postcards to put on the freebie table/in the goody bag/distribute? I have some left over from my various efforts and they might as well go to good homes.

If you can help, drop me a note at rolanniATkorvalDOTcom and I'll pop some in the mail to you.

In other news, I have created an Elegant Draped Effect for my back window, which remains shut all winter. Steve does not understand my drapey thing; especially he does not understand it on one window only. He wonders if I can't cut the existing one in half and drape both windows, in the service of symmetry.

Great Art is always misunderstood.

Comments

[isabellag.livejournal.com]

I think there should be some rules around curtain purchasing, the first one of which should be "don't let the men come with you". Men don't get the curtain thing at all. They never understand why you need three times the width of the window to get a decent effect, and they certainly don't understand the 'multiply window width by three & then divide total by one curtain panel width to find out how many panels you need' thingy.

Good luck with the lamp search - I have an Anglepoise I bought years ago at our office supplies outlet - sturdy, reliable, inoffensive looking.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

As a man, I resemble that remark *g*. No, I don't see why curtains need to be more than the window size plus a bit for overlaps (say 6-9 inches each edge). Nor, for that matter, do I see any reason for them to be anything other than black, the purpose is to keep the outside out and the inside in (hmm, perhaps I could see a point of having white or silver on the inside to keep the light in rather than absorbing it).

(Dividing the total by the panel size (including the Finagle factor) and rounding up is what you do, though. A Finagle factor of 3 is excessive.)

I'm not only a man but also an engineer. Use the minimum quantity to do the job efficiently...