We're back up at the condo, at Cascade Village, at Purgatory at Durango Mountain Resort.

(that's a lot of stuff to say to say where we are. From now on, I'll say "Purgatory" to mean the ski hill, "Cascade" to mean the condo, and "Durango" to mean the town)

There are a lot of things about the condo that we just love, but - as always - it's the things that you don't like that get your attention.

Here's something that I don't like.

A long time ago, a fellow named Edison spent a lot of time in his laboratory finding a filament that would produce light when you pushed an electric current through it. He called this invention the "Electric Light Bulb" and it changed the world.

Now, technology has produced a new breakthrough - we now have filaments that will produce light when you push an electric current through them - after five minutes or so!!! Yes, we've improved upon Mr. Edison's invention by creating light bulbs that not only produce electric light, they also cause the growth of the virtue of patience in the user!

                       

You turn these lights on, and they sorta glow dimly for a few minutes, and then, after a while, they actually turn on.
We've got a condo with WiFi, internet phone, we watch Buffy in DVD surround sound  on a 40" LCD screen, but we don't actually have Edison-level technology in electric lighting. We have to turn the lights on and wait for them to warm up.

There's a reason that these lights don't come on - it's because they are (supposedly) eco-friendly. Somehow or other, having lights that wait to turn on is more energy-efficient than having lights that come on immediately. (I'm not even going to address the chemical makeup of these non-light bulbs, which I understand is supposed to be hazardous to living things on the same level as toxic waste or old nuclear-reactor core rods). We turn on the lights and wait for them to come on because we are thus being "friendly to the planet".

Of course, there's an easy fix for this - replace these new, eco-friendly non-lights with actual light bulbs. And I intend to do that, just as soon as I've run 40 miles this week and skiied every day and made five meetings.

What I mean is, that I've overextended my schedule. So, when I walk into a dark room at 6 AM and need to grab my stuff to load up my gym bag, and I turn on the light, and the lights don't actually come on bright enough to see what I'm doing, then I get a lot less eco-friendly.

And the end result is that I actually turn on the lights, leave the room, go do something else in some other room while the lights are coming on - and, of course, this distracts me from my original task, so now the lights are on for a half an hour or so, before I walk back into the room and do what takes thirty seconds to do. This is called "saving electricity" - of course, it gets me yelled at by my Precious Soulmate for "leaving the lights on" - at which time, I have to say "No, I didn't leave the LIGHTS on - I left the DARKS on".

That's it - after a century of light, we've achieved Electric Dark.