Mood lighting and more
Plus some painting
Well, it’s almost December. I’ve had my Christmas lights up a week or so because I find they chase the November blahs away, but here’s a handy little trick since they don’t make ‘em like they used to: I have my “outside” lights up on the inside of those windows with a a timer in each room and I simply correct the timer’s setting and plug ‘em all in to put my lights “up.”
No getting on a ladder in the mud or having to clip them to the gutters and no having a bunch of the bulbs corrode out because they’re not made as well as they were 20 years ago and the new ones seem to die after just a few weeks outside in the West Coast rain.
I do have lights on under the covered patio in the back of my house, but 2 out of those 5 strands have been dead for a couple years now.
Inside the house, a few years ago I added a string of purple LEDs snaking around the half-wall between my two desks, but had been simply relying on plugging it in manually when I wanted, but then that was the slightest bit of hassle so I didn’t bother. I finally put that on a timer too and it will remain year-round.
Some 15 years ago when I was doing the music thing, some of the studios I visited had 2 things for mood lighting: Christmas lights and lava lamps. When I set up my own little mini-studio in my rehearsal spaces that I dubbed “maQLu Central,” I added both and found I really loved that mood lighting vibe.
In this house, however, I hadn’t really done much mood lighting. I did, a couple of Christmases ago, get a “curtain light” that I hung between the two bookshelves in the living room, which has been left up… but those are battery operated and so rely on my ability to bother with the slightest bit of hassle to slide the switch to on… so… they ain’t on.
I really should have them on more, though. Great vibe.
Anyway, I mention all this as it pertains to one my biggest projects this week: obeying the Petersonian edict to “clean up your room!”
Back in September I’d been musing about how I could improve my bedroom and I realized with some dread I was going to have to not just do a deep clean but rearrange things for better space optimization. Yesterday morning I was supposed to head down to Victoria to see the Shumka Nutcracker, but I’m getting over a cold and while I’d been down to Victoria the previous two days, I just didn’t have the energy to go again, and then have to sit still for the Nutcracker and deal with parking on a Saturday, etc.
When I say energy, I mean mental because immediately my brain went to the “hey, maybe I can finally fix my room” as an alternative use for the day, and I went for it.
Sure, it involved moving furniture, fighting with the vacuum, and even lugging a heavy old trunk up the stairs that I think is the one my grandmother brought to Canada from Poland in 1948 because I need storage for blankets closer to the bed rather than downstairs in the living room… but compared to being around people and traffic, all that was pretty energy-efficient.
Oh, when I say fighting with the vacuum… well… see, my hair is down to my butt and I am well-aware of what that can do to a vacuum, so before vacuuming, I always sit down on the rug with a silicone lint brush, the sort for removing pet hair from sofas, and I brush my stupid carpet to lift up all the hairballs I can’t see so it doesn’t get into my vacuum. And I did this yesterday, and I guess it’s shedding season plus I’ve been negligent in doing this for a couple months because I got a bunch of hairballs.
Even so, at some point the vacuum seemed to not be working so well and I took the powerhead off and flipped it over:
Crap… that can’t be just from today, though, because I don’t think I’d even inspected the powerhead of this vacuum (my brother’s old Dyson) though I’ve had to do that a few times with my own Bissell upright over the years.
So, I sat down with tweezers, scissors, a garbage bag, and YouTube on my laptop and set about cutting the wrapped hairs off the brush roller and pulling the pieces out. For half an hour.
I should probably still take some stuff apart in the actual Dyson to ensure there aren’t hairs wrapped around anything else.
And clearly I need to be more diligent with the lint brush.
Anyway, hairballs aside, I got things organized and the vibe was vastly better but still missing something. I knew from downstairs in the studio and long ago in maQLu Central: mood lighting.
Now, I do have a couple of lava lamps, but they’re on duty in my audio editing cubby. And I do have a bunch of LED strings out in the shed, some of which used to be in maQLu Central, but all have long-since been relegated to outside duty, which means there’s probably spiders in those bins and I didn’t feel like sorting through all that in the cold.
The more lights, the merrier… so I went to Canadian Tire and grabbed a couple more strands and a couple of timers:
I still need to go through my drawers and tidy up some clutter and whatnot, but for now, we’ll call it done.
I mentioned getting over a cold. It’s was at its worst on Wednesday and Thursday so I stayed home and painted at home. And before I got too far, I remembered that I’d planned to start doing “Paint With Me” videos… in January… but I got the brilliant idea to film what I was painting all day on Wednesday… when I was sick… and could barely talk…
Sigh… not one of my better ideas, but oh well, I did it and got 3 episodes shot on Wednesday… scratchy voice and all.
Oh well… I edited out most of the coughing and added some classical music in the background.
I still need to edit the next two episodes and the painting isn’t finished so I need to put in a few more hours tomorrow and Tuesday and probably film then, too.
I think for 2026, I will have specific paintings that I film every time I work on, but otherwise won’t film other paintings. Kinda slows down the painting and I’d end up with a crazy amount of footage if I did film everything I want to paint. Plus, if I post one video a week, the videos will be taking way longer than the painting will and will be out of sync with any social media posts I do.
But more on YouTube plans for the new year another time.
In other art news, happy Valentine’s!
This is a new record: last year I didn’t see any hearts stuff til December 2, but this pic was taken in one of the Victoria Homesense locations on Friday November 28.
Oh well. Based on the last couple years I expect the Easter Bunny to show up around December 27th.