I had not thought of an Ott-Light, Sophia - that's a good idea.

I don't know. I'm torn between my desire to just "fix" the problem - just buy something to use - because being able to read in bed at the end of the day is a very important part of my life and everything feels "unbalanced" when I can't do it well or comfortably - and my desire to get the absolutely perfect thing, the Paragon of floor lamps that will never break and will have long bulb-life and will not keep me too awake.

And I also realize, with some self-loathing, that here I am griping about a fracking LAMP when there are real problems in the world and people suffering REAL losses. But someone somewhere made the comment that instead of "the nature of Man" or "the search for the Divine" being the real things that unite people and get them discussing, it tends more to be "when my feet hurt" and "how I hate standing in line."

I suppose it's because the durn lamp is something I can control. People killing other people, massive poverty and famine, government corruption preventing aid from getting to the people that need it in Africa...those are things I can do little to nothing about (well, nothing tangible; one of my friends would quickly remind me I can always pray about them). And it's a whole lot easier to close down to the one-inch frame and focus on the things I have some modicum of control over, these days.

(ETA: I've been looking at Levenger's lamps. They have a couple of very nice floor lamps. But. One of them is fluorescent, and I don't care how much they protest that it won't flicker, it will. And I hate fluorescent light anyway - spend my days under it and I'm d....d if I will spend my evenings under it as well. There's one, but it has a "touch the lamp and it dims automatically" feature which concerns me - will it be like those old "touch lamps" where they'd be set off by humidity or a truck rumbling by, and go on unpredictably in the middle of the night. And at any rate - I KNOW I said I'd spend $150 or more for a good lamp...but some of those things are like $650 - BEFORE shipping. Argh. So I don't know. I guess I'm going to try the furniture store. I'm fighting a temptation to just throw up my hands and go to Sherman - after all, isn't this the day the new KnitScene magazine's supposed to be out? And I suspect that JoAnn's or Books'A'Million are the only fairly local places that will have them...I don't know.

I just wish the darned lamp hadn't broke.)