The Great Electric Puzzle...

...is solved!
One afternoon last week Michelle and I took down two light fixtures in the hallway. Clumsy looking things from the '80s.
That evening we noticed that some of the outlets in three bedrooms were not functioning. I hated that since I had no reading light in the evening or radio to wake up to.
Michelle's dad came to sort it out. He made sparks fly, but admitted defeat.
I found a semi-retired electrician who spend four hours today chasing down this problem and installing four simple lights fixtures. Installation of those took maybe one hour, the rest was spent tracing electric lines in the walls and listening to his beeper tool. He disassembled outlets, put them back together. We moved a couch to get to the main switch box in the garage. I emptied two book cases and moved them to check the outlets hidden behind them.
Lastly we moved the bathroom cabinet to check the outlet there. Well, well, well, there was the defective safety plug.
So, it was strictly coincidence that we took the fixtures down and lost power on the same day. I'm happy to know that the jumble of wires that spew from the wall boxes is actually not a messed up mess as I'd suspected.
And it didn't cost me any limbs to pay for it.