This little light of mine

We've all had the experience of turning on the lights and having an incandescent bulb choose that moment to burn out in a flash of glory. There is a flashbulb effect as the surge of electricity overwhelms the old, ready-to-expire filament, and then relative darkness depending on whether there are other lights in the fixture or room. This time Carolyn wasn't even turning on the lights in the bathroom. They were already on. Luckily, she had bent down to get something out of the bathroom drawer when the light above flashed, popped, and pieces went flying in several directions at once. It sounded like she had dropped a fragile glass onto the ceramic counter from several feet above.

old & new
Fortunately, most of the pieces were large and easy to retrieve because a bathroom isn't a nice place to have little glass slivers on the floor. Also, it was easy enough to remove the old light bulb base to put the replacement bulb in. We're still trying to figure out what would have made the bulb explode like that rather than just die the brilliant death chosen by most light bulbs.