"Electricity is . . .

. . . actually made up of extremely tiny particles called electrons that you cannot see with the naked eye unless you have been drinking.” (Dave Barry)

A week and a half ago, Katka says something like, "Danielko, when you have the time, would you take a look at the outlet in my room, please? It's not working."

Being retired, I've got lots of time, but it still took me a week before I got around to it. Always careful (with electricity, anyway), I flipped the circuit breaker before replacing the outlet. I then re-flipped the circuit breaker and confidently stuck the tester into the new outlet. Nothing.

"Hmmmm," I says. Again I flip the circuit breaker, remove the cover plate, and pull the outlet from the box. "I thought that's what I saw," I says to myself, "this plug's a 'dead end,' there's only one cable coming into this box, and it's the one that's attached to the outlet. The problem must be at the other end of this cable. Now where could the other end be? I know -- it's probably at that other outlet over there."

The circuit breaker still being flipped off, all I had to do was move a chair and a bed to get access to that other outlet. "Hmmmmmm," I says, "This outlet's a dead end too! Where could the cable to that dead outlet be coming from? It must be from the light fixture in the closet; that's the closest thing."

I've taken down lots of ceiling light fixtures in my day -- and usually I've been able to get them back up -- but it's not one of my favorite things. "I know what I'll do." I says, "Rob, the electrician, is coming in a couple days to install a circuit for (yet another!) kiln. I'll ask him if he thinks the other end of the cable is probably in the light fixture. If he says yes, then I'll pull the fixture."

Rob comes and installs the entire circuit for the kiln in about 20 minutes.

Then I tell him about Katka's outlet and he tells me he's got a gadget that allows him to track cables through drywall. (One part of the gadget sends a pulse through the cable and the other part, when held against the wall, beeps when it is near the cable.) Rob and I spent 20 minutes tracking that cable -- along the wall, into the closet, up into the attic, back down again into Katka's room. All of a sudden, Rob says, "Oh, no!" He disconnects the gadget. He gives me a looonnnggggg look, flips a wall switch, and touches the outlet with his probe: BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP. The damned outlet is controlled by a wall switch and we [I] didn't have it turned on.

PS. How I met Rob:

We lost power in the garage last fall after a big storm. A friend gave me Rob's number. On the day Rob came, our street was blocked off because a broken tree limb was perilously close to the power lines, so Rob had to follow the detour signs and park a block away; then he had to lug his toolbox to our house.

When he got here, he pulled the cover to the circuit box in the garage and said "This breaker is fried -- lightning, probably. This other one, however, looks fine -- and there's nothing attached to it. How about it I just switch the breakers -- take the bad one out and insert the one that's not connected to anything?" I considered this for about, oh, half a second: "Sure!" That's what he did. Problem solved.

"Rob," I says, "how much should I make the check out for?" "Oh, no," he says, "that was nothing. No charge at all. See ya', Dan." And he started lugging his tools back to his truck. Flummoxed as I was, I was still able to say, "Hey, no, wait a minute, that's not fair!"

I think I had about $30 in my pocket and that's what I wound up giving him. And I knew I had found MY electrician.