Before and After

Quite a few posts back, I inserted a picture of my bedside lamp after a fire. I never explained what happened though. To save you some scrolling, here is the picture again.



The lamp/bulb had been flickering on and off for a while, but tightening the bulb usually did the trick. I headed to bed one night at 3 am. I had fallen asleep in my chair in the living room. So when I headed into the bedroom, I switched on the lamp by my bed for light. The bulb came on and then went out, but _mysteriously_ there was still light. Well, see, flames were shooting out of the on/off switch!! They were tall enough, clearly, to almost reach the top of the bulb and therefore were very near the shade... I grabbed the lamp, unplugged it and blew the flames out on the way to the bathroom. Imagine what might have happened had I fallen asleep in bed with that lamp on... Thank God (literally) that it happened when I was able to put it out.

I replaced the lamp a few weeks ago with the one you see below. It was on sale (always a good thing) and the finish matches that of my ceiling fan (which I installed shortly after I moved into the house). This particular lamp was labeled as safe for use with a 3 way bulb... Hmm, I was using a 3 way bulb in the other lamp; however, that lamp had no such label. Then again, it was hard to read the labels after the fire.