Already eight ten on your Thursday morning, getting closer and closer to the weekend where you can listen to our good friend Gary Sullivan on our sister station, fifty five KRC nine to noon Saturdays and Sundays, and he syndicated across nearly three hundred radio stations across America.
You're a big league operator, Gary, Oh I try.
I try so well.
I mean, you are.
A big league operator, big time man, you know, Gary. I gotta tell you, there are very few things in life that I can say I just despise. Okay, very few, And I bet I'm gonna talk about it. You're going to talk about what I'm today. Because when my bride Polly says to me, Hey, you know what, let's take Saturday and put up Christmas.
Lights, mean, oh my god, I lose my mind.
You can't go hide.
I can't go hide. You can run, but you.
Put your little elf suit on.
Oh my god.
All right, but a lot of people love doing it, and I'm gonna ultimately go do it. But look, there is some safety to consider and newmero. You know, whether it's Christmas lights, whether it's changing a white bulb, something maybe in the ceiling.
Getting on a ladder.
Man, you have I know a fellow who died from a fall I do out in Arizona, and you know his wife told him he was a little bit older guy. But it can happen to a young person too, right, sure.
Well it kind of really starts with the type of ladder. And I'm you know, like if you're hanging X to your lights, every ladder has a weight limit on it, and everybody buys the cheapest ladder, right, I mean I'll buy the type on it's got a two hundred pounds weight limit. You take a walk around, there's a lot of people over two hundred pounds. Seriously, be careful. Second thing is an extension ladder. If you're hanging lights on a gutter not having a professionally decorated in there, there's
an idea for you. Tom a lot of that going on now, don't give me any ideas. Don't get a lot going on.
I just stop it. I mean, I like you.
I don't want to go south on you, all right, but some professional really does and don'ts about putting up lights outside?
Yeah yeah, So make sure you use the ladder, make sure it's steady, make sure it's got a good footing, make sure somebody's there with you. Make sure it extends three feet above where you're going to hang the lights, like extends above the gutter. Just make sure it's solid, make sure somebody's with you. And when you do the you should always have three points of contact. You know, you got two rails on the side for your hands, you got your feet, that's four. Don't put one foot
down and you know, do a two point contact. That's unsafe. So that's probably number one. Number two is where have you stored your lights? A lot of people storm in the attic, and that's the worse place in the world. I mean that attic in the summertime can be one hundred and forty hundred and fifty degrees. Those light cords are very thin, they get very brittle. They're soy oil and they get very brittle. They crack, and then if you start putting the wrong bushes outside with rain and stuff,
that's certainly a big issue. I mean, that's a big issue. So another thing you don't want to do. This is interesting, and this happened to me when you're about ten years ago, is letting light cords or extension cords sit on the ground.
Really.
I went out one morning and my lights weren't on, and I looked around the bush and I find this extension cord and it looked like somebody with the diagonal players cut the cord. And I'm like, who in the world would come up through the through the driveway, through the yard and cut my my Christmas lights? I mean, what the heck?
Yeah?
And I got on the radio and I was just kind of moaning that fact, and somebody called in and said, what was that extension cord on the ground. Yeah, and he goes, there's a rabbit.
No kidding, I said.
A rabbit And he goes, yeah. And he told me the reason. He said, there's soy oil in those cords, and rabbits and squirrels will cut them and it'll look like an absolute perfect cut.
And it did.
I would have bet my life that a diagonal plier cut that thing. Extension cords and like cords, get those off the ground.
Yeah, But Gary, I mean, you and I both know, okay, And you and I both know. When you're going out there and let's say you've got a row of bushes and you're hanging some lights off of them, right, and you plug it into an extension cord. How in the world are you supposed to keep that thing off the ground from where you're plugging it in, perhaps in an outlet that sits outdoors.
Yeah, well you can get little steaks, okay, an inn slaved staple. Put it right at the top where the quard or extension cord is going to the next set of bushes. Keep it off the ground. Okay, all right, So that's how you do it. And the biggest protection of all the lights, and I know you got a big interview, so I want to run through this real quick. The biggest protection and safety device is having them plugged
into a ground fault circuit interrupter. If there's a short, if there's moisture in the connections, that will automatically just shut the entire display down. And it's funny, it's a protection device, but everybody always thinks when it shuts it down, it's the protection device's fault.
It's right, It's not that I have a moisture.
Problem or short. It's that device's fault. Of course it could be, but rarely is. And what you want to do, and a ground fault circuit interrupter is the one where it's got the little red button and a little black button in the middle of the outlet. Yeah, you can reset it. Many of us have reset them many times and they reset, right. I mean, you plug it in and it resets. But if it doesn't reset, what's going on. Well, maybe it is the ground fall circuit interrupter there, or
maybe there's water getting down behind the outlet itself. But do check that. If it goes off once and it resets, that's fine. There was a moisture issue. It worked, everybody's good. If it doesn't reset, you may have to replace that, or you may have to investigate what's going on and it's probably Again gets back to the electrical connections time where the plugs, you know, plugging into the outlet and don't wrap them with tape. Sometimes moisture gets trapped in
there and can't dry. Just a good tight saran wrap around there is nice. And make sure the cords. The outdoor lights are obviously outdoor lights, but the extension cords. I've seen people use lamp extension cords. No, no, no, no, it's got to be an outdoor of course to figure that out. Yeah, but people still do it. You know you want to get that job done because you love to do that.
Love it. Now.
One thing I want to circle back to before I let you go, And we do have Zach Taylor coming up here in about the seven minutes. I don't know, we're about to find out. We're about to find out, and we're gonna ask him. I can promise you that we might ask him three or four or five or seven times.
That's good for you. Okay, let me.
Ask you this show real quick, as I want to circle back. You were talking about the ladder, okay. A lot of times Gary, when you're hanging up stuff outside, you're having to put that ladder on the ground right right, Okay, So I mean ill, that's where I.
Always get a little scared and concern for sure.
Yeah, especially if it's on a slope. You've got to make sure that it has very very good footing. And you don't want that letter to be going straight up either. You want that kicked out. There is a formula which is not into my head right now, but on how far out from from the wall it should be. But it should be a nice not straight up and down. It should be a nice gradual maybe like a forty five degrees sixty degree slope. But you know, it's amazing.
I'm sorry to hear about your friend that that you know, fell from a ladder, but it happens all the time. It's like the number one emergency. Nobody thinks to have somebody out there with them, not that they're going to catch them. But I don't know about your spouse, but mine would quickly tell me that ladder doesn't look solid.
Yeah, well mine, I don't know. Maybe she wants that thing going. Well, you never know, you never know. You very long enough, you never know.
You never know.
All right, my friend, Thanks for your time is always giving, Happy Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving. You and your family appreciate it.
Thank you, buddy,