so last night i go to turn on the lamp in the dining room, and as soon as i twist the knob the light bulb blows out.
that's happened to all of us before, right? no biggie. i grabbed another light bulb, screwed it in, then turned the knob... but got nothing. darkness. hrm.
i'm embarrassed to admit the number of unsuccessful combinations i tried (light bulbs, lamps, outlets) before i finally realized that the breaker had been tripped and that's why i wasn't getting anything to work. duh.
so i flipped the breaker back on and with a new bulb in the socket i tried the original lamp again. POOF! that light bulb blows out too, and the breaker tripped again. this isn't good.
at this point ray becomes interested. he suspects a short somewhere in the wiring, which seems logical. but we're curious to know what exactly causes the breaker to flip... is it simply turning on the lamp? perhaps screwing in a bulb? so the testing begins... i unplug the lamp and unscrew the bulb, then turn the breaker back on.
the first test tells us everything we need to know. simply plugging the lamp into the wall causes the breaker to flip. crazy.
so ray and i start disassembling the lamp. 
ray is looking for cat-chewed areas on the cord. he finds nothing. i examine the bulb socket... and wonder what that little silver doo-dad is in there. it's attached, but it looks kinda rough.
we compare it to a doo-dad in an operable lamp and notice there is a slight difference between the two. the good lamp's doo-dad looks much smoother.
and now that i'm on this trail, i notice the first light bulb... the one that blew out when i twisted the knob the first time. it has a black singe mark and a small hole in the silver, threaded part. it looks like the electricity burned through it, right in the spot where it rested against the doo-dad.
so the doo-dad must be the culprit... mystery is solved. (at least the mystery about what was causing the short... how it got that way is another thing altogether.) 
i'm feeling ambitious, so i'm going to the home depot after work to purchase a new socket. i'll try to repair the lamp myself tonight.
this could be interesting. if i can do this without killing myself, i can probably install the new lighting fixture i got from ikea! :-)