Last time I tried to stay at my parents’ place, it didn’t work great: my mom tends to get up at midnight and start cooking. I can totally pay for my own accommodation even if I’m perhaps sometimes cheap. So I found an airbnb two metro stations from their place, near Langelier metro.
The Airbnb is good value. It’s not expensive ($50/night all in), and it’s not fancy. In these COVID times, the separate bathroom in particular is nice, because it means that I can just hide in the suite most of the time and put on a mask in the rare event that I need to traverse the common spaces. I could cook there, but it’s better to cook at my parents’ place.
But it turns out that I’m picky about some things (just a few), like colour temperature. I’m not universally picky! Just about selected things.
I guess that when you get pot lights you have fine-grained control over colour temperature. For LED light bulbs, though, usually you have two choices: “cool white” (aka “daylight”; typically 5000K) or “soft white” (typically 2700K).
I hate cool white!!! Especially in bedrooms. Argh! Hate hate hate. It’s harsh, there’s too much blue, and I understand blue light is really not good for sleep. We actually have a very orange light in the bedroom back at home. Maybe cool white OK for bathrooms because it “looks clean”, but even then, I have doubts (you brush your teeth just before bed, right?)
Anyway, so I wanted to do something about the colour temperature situation. I thought about showing up at my parents’ house and rummaging for a better light bulb, but I didn’t.
The airbnb is right across the street from a Walmart, grocery store, and pharmacy.
- I’m sure the Walmart could help, but it was closed at 7pm (huh).
- I would expect the grocery store to have light bulbs—they usually have a small hardware section—but I failed to find them.
- The prarmacy did have light bulbs, but all they had in stock for LEDs was a cool white. Wait, that doesn’t get me any further ahead.
Drat! Failed! Back to the airbnb.
I looked around some more and investigated the light bulbs in detail. The one in the bedroom was the cool white CFL which I hated. The one in the dining room area in my suite was an incandescent (hence warm). I started swapping them… but then I realized that the light bulb in the corner of the bathroom was a warm white LED. Victory!
I put the incandescent in the bathroom, the CFL in the dining room, and the LED in the bedroom.
Ahh! So much calmer and better. Seriously!