This is a bad thing on so many levels.
It is hard to look manly when you are running screaming through the house, slapping yourself.
If you think it pisses Carrie off when I work on the house wiring without shutting off the electricity, you should see her reaction when the sparks from the resulting electrical short catch my shirt on fire.

The ceiling light in my closet wasn’t working and some of the wires were exposed. We had purchased a replacement fixture and I decided to remove the old one. I was standing on a chair removing the collar that surrounds the broken socket base to get a better look. It came loose much more easily than expected and fell across the exposed bulb base and hot lead. The short almost melted the bulb base in half.

The molten metal rained down in a shower of sparks that landed mainly on me. I pushed the collar away from the wire and jumped from the chair. Realizing the sparks had lit my shirt on fire, I was dancing around the room, smacking myself about the head and shoulders when Carrie came to see what all the noise was.

I immediately adopted the totally innocent “Nothing’s wrong, Honey” pose that is rarely effective. This time its chance of success was hampered by the cloud of smoke that extended from the closet and encircled my head. The burn holes in my shirt didn’t help.

We turned off the electricity, removed the charred remains of the offending fixture and, deciding to complete this job another day, capped the wires with wire nuts and electrical tape.

Why didn’t the dead short trip the circuit breaker? We were wondering the same thing. Since we didn’t know what breaker controlled which circuit, we had turned off the main. We turned the power back on one breaker at a time to map the circuits. There are four ceiling lights on a sixty amp circuit. Fifteen would have been enough. Sixty is enough for an air-conditioner and a toaster oven. Sixty is enough for a dead short in a ceiling light that welds the metal without tripping the breaker.

We knew the wiring in this house was screwy, we just didn’t how screwy.
In exchange for Carrie letting me continue to wear my shirt with the cool burn holes, I’ve promised her I’ll turn the power off before starting any other wiring jobs.