After the Show Podcast: Murphy's Law

Why don't men read instructions?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So Murphy Samon Jody after the show podcast got Thanksgiving
week ahead, and you know, Sam, I figured I would
use this past weekend to kind of get some important
things done around the house that I want hobby types, well,
not hobby stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
What do you call this just to do stuff, Jody,
but decorations things. No, I didn't do that.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
It's man projects.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yeah, it's it's I guess it's all weekend.

Speaker 4 (00:18):
He had that headlamp on and his brace and just
were's my flash light and it was was really cool.

Speaker 5 (00:26):
You posted one of those pictures a couple of weeks ago,
and I swear I look like Murphy worked. He just
needed the orange vest and it'd be home depot.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
That's me. Sometimes I just put it on because it's fun.

Speaker 4 (00:38):
I want you to know when I left the house
this morning, early in the early morning hours, it was
you know, still dark outside. The lights look beautiful. Well,
one of the things he did was he lit up
the house.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
This is accent lighting, accent holiday light.

Speaker 4 (00:52):
Yeah, it's funny because we're about to switch it to
crazy you know, Christmas down in a week or two.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
But I had bought these lights back in June and
it was going to be. It was supposed to my
summer vacation project, but that didn't happen.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
So let's see, we were binging some TV show.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Yeah, but it was almost embarrassing, Sam, because this is
the second time I've done this. I experimented with this
type of landscape lighting before Jodie and I moved to
the old house, and I did the classic guy thing
where you halfway read the instructions. I don't know what
this is about. You know, as many years as I've
been building doing all that kind of stuff, I still

(01:29):
mentally you want to short cut the instrument.

Speaker 5 (01:31):
Yeah, you just look at the box and go, no,
I know what I'm doing here.

Speaker 4 (01:33):
Because you've been thinking about it for a day, you
think you know what to do, right.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
And so yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
So the last time that I did the landscape lighting, man,
I mean I got serious about it. You know, it's
called low voltage lighting. So you run this wiring and
I had little things to splice and cut with and
the little caps that you put on the wires, and
you know, make sure that everything is siliconed up so
seal up no water gets in it. And it was
about a two day project. Man, it just was not easy. Well,

(01:59):
this time I read the instructions and I didn't realize
these these low voltage lighting kits are are just that,
they're kits. And so if you actually do it the
way that they're supposed to be done, all you do
is you string the cable out, which you do by separately,
and then the wiring is the are these little caps
that you then you slide the wire from the lamp

(02:22):
itself into this little slot and then you attach the
main wire in on the other side, and you screw
this cap down that punches holes through and boom you've
got lighting. Right, Okay, Well, so this time it only
took me a day because I actually followed the instructions.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
But the results are Okay, aren't they Jodi?

Speaker 3 (02:41):
They're beautiful. They're gorgeous.

Speaker 5 (02:45):
Is it floodlights?

Speaker 1 (02:46):
I don't know, Well they call them for it's a
mix of three white floodlights A and two shrub las.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
My favorite are the ones shrub lights.

Speaker 4 (02:54):
My favorites are the ones you put maybe these are
the shrub lights, the ones you put down along the
walkway like there's a slidewalk walking up to the front door,
and they're they're just like guiding lights.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Those sidewalk lights, I don't know what you call those. No,
the shrub lights are the ones that are pointed at
the shruck.

Speaker 4 (03:14):
That my favorite part about this weekend with you, Murphy,
is you don't realize it's this conversation that Phoebe and
I had about you. So you know, these projects always
take longer than you think. And so Saturday evening, Phoebe
has a bunch of friends coming over. You know, we're
set to watch the game. We've got pizza, We're just
it's Saturday nights. The sun is going down, it's time.

(03:37):
And you, Murphy, had had a I guess a what
do you call it, a hurdle in your.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Project with the ceiling.

Speaker 4 (03:46):
There's a ceiling fan light outside he wanted to fix
in the back and it was getting dark, and we're like,
why don't you just finish tomorrow?

Speaker 3 (03:55):
No, I have to do it now.

Speaker 4 (03:58):
I'm like, the game is about to so I watched
the first quarter by myself.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
But yeah, I'm sorry about that.

Speaker 4 (04:05):
But it's like, and I can see you outside at
the headlamp on cursing, you know, and it's just like,
and Phoebe came to me, she goes, why is he
out there doing that right now? Like, why can't he
wait till tomorrow? I said, Phoebe, He is stubborn. He's
made up his mind to do this today and he
will do it before midnight.

Speaker 5 (04:21):
It's not really stubbornness. I mean, at least me when
I get into the If I get into the project mood,
you're going to ride that wave as long as you can,
because you know, when you wake up tomorrow you could
ache from the day before. You could just say, you
know what, there's only that one thing left, I'll get
to it, and you never do get to it. So
it's like push ahead while while you're in the mood

(04:42):
to do it, you know what.

Speaker 4 (04:43):
I also liked, enjoyed though, your sense of accomplishment by
last night, by Sunday evening was lovely. You were in
a very good mood, walking really tall because you completed
every project you intended to do.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah, I did well, and I actually did.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
The ceiling fan was tough because it was one of
those where I wired it up and I'm really careful
with you know, wiring, and I don't want to shock myself,
so I do the whole breaker and of course the
breaker to turn this off is all the way around
the other side of the house, so anytime it's time
to test it, it's like the old cartoons, you know,
run around click click, and and so the light just

(05:21):
would not work. And it's already the sun has already
gone down, and this is where and I almost felt bad.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
I was too frustrated. It's like, Dad, why don't you
wait till tomorrow because I can't.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
So I can't wait at the kids.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
But it turned out that the light switch itself was bad,
and I was proud of myself because I figured I
had figured that part out, and I'm like, okay, tomorrow,
that's what I will check. It's too dark now and
I don't want to start messing around with tracing wires
around the ground and all that kind of stuff at night.
So the next morning, it turns out it was the
switch that was bad. I'll spare you my you know
investigative skills that caused that to happen. But so I

(05:57):
got that fixed, and you know, the lights started to work.
So we got landscape lighting, we got a backlight, and
I fixed something on my car.

Speaker 3 (06:05):
So I should have brought my car up so much time.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
I felt so good. Almost went to sleep last night
with that headlamp on.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
Missed any part of the show.

Speaker 4 (06:16):
Get it All at Murphy Salmon, Jody dot com.