The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here!

 I'm sure you can imagine quite a bit, but this is how I felt when the truck arrived to deliver my new riding lawn mower!!!

The new phone book's here!  The new phone book's here!

The guy unloaded it and left it in front of the garage.  Encased in a crate that would make the Raiders of the Lost Ark cast jealous.  

Because you can see it through the crate and it'd be easier to find in that warehouse...

Look at me, referencing 2 classic movies in the first two inches of the blog post!

Someone should be paying me for this.

A couple hours later, I woke up Leon and he helped me tear it down.  It was up about 5 inches off the ground so we had to be careful.  I didn't want to make it drop!  We worked on it, took a break, worked on it some more.  Then thought about it. 

 Using the jack was the best idea because then we could lift it off the platform shoes that was keeping it 4 inches higher and knock them out of the way.

Got it down to the bare minimum and then I gassed and oiled it up and drove it off the last bit.

The wood is all back by the fire-pit and I'll burn it at my leisure.  Maybe tonight after tacos.

Anyway, I tried it out around the front yard and as I'm trimming, a wee bit of smoke came out from under the hood.  Uh oh.  Maybe it's burning off some oil that I'd spilled.

Around a steeper corner, great mounds of smoke billowed out and blew into the back yard.

Oh dear!

I turned off the blades and drove it back to the front where I saw a nice pool of oil under where it had been parked the first time.

huh...

I opened up the hood to see if I could tell where the oil was coming from.

Found it.

I hadn't put the oil cap back on properly and oil was spewing from the cattywampus oil cap!

sigh.

After cleaning up a much as I could with a paper towel, I decided to just let it sit for the night.  I'll mow today.  I let my brother know of my screw up and he was helpful by suggesting I check the level of oil before I mow again to make sure I hadn't lost it all.

I very well might have to make another trip to get more. bummer.  but maybe not.  We'll see.

Anyway, yay me!  I got a new mower!

and broke it the first day...