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...

One of those things...

 One of these things is just like the others.

What do these 3 things have in common?

Issues with the mower.

Well, new to me mower!  My brother brought me his old mower, which actually used to be my dad's!

So it means a lot to me that I get to use it now.

However, Mark wasn't even home yet (3 hours away) with his trailer when I mowed the back yard and the belt fell off.  It was sheared.  We don't know how that happened.

He's getting ready for Burning Man next week so I don't want to impose on him again, however I did call him about some advice a few, maybe more, times in putting the new one on.

I finally got the new belt on and finished the back yard today.  Took it over to Meri's and did her yard too.

Before I even attempted this today, I got a message from Ryan saying that a good friend of his wondered if someone would loan him a mower as his had just broken.

I agreed to drop it off for him when I got done with Meri's yard because they live less than a block away.  No big!

Well, it was a big.  I got there and the friend's dad was already there trimming and mowing.  I turned off the mower and chitchatted with him for a bit before attempting to start my mower again to take it home.

The dad said that fire, then smoke was coming out from the front of the engine.

sigh.

It's cooling off on their yard for the moment until I come over later this afternoon to try and start it.

I might be buying that brand new one sooner than spring.

Trust me to kill off Dad's mower!