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...

Hugh, the Car

Tires Tires Tires... 

Robb (and some me) (and some Ryan) changed 4 tires over the course the last 3 days. 

Vanna (my van, named by Maddy and Matthew, driven by Meri this past week because her car *Hugh Jackman* is in the shop) and I told about this on Monday.

Jen's car twice on Monday.  Once to the donut tire and then back to the fixed tire, while she was at work.  Not sure if her car has a name...

Then Vanna again, while Meri was at play practice, back to a brand new tire because the last one was shredded.

All this while being driven around in Davis, Meri's old car, which is actually a Ford Fusion.

We took Ed, the Edge, in to have a light checked out.  This was named by our Pastor and his wife because the emblem on the back is broken... 

The Sweetness needs more power steering fluid but the hood is stuck shut. 

We gave Meri the bad news about Hugh Jackman last night.  She might want to rename him Logan...  The engine is shot and Hugh has died.  I heard her tell Robb, amidst some tears, "I just wish I could have driven him one more time..."

He's gone to a better place, or will once I make the call to donate him to Teen Challenge.

I wish I could sew something and make it all better.

Witch Ahead

Do you know what these tiny things are?  They're the capacitors of a big screen tv.  If they go bad, you get a flickering screen of death and eventually it won't turn on at all...  

 

We were given this big screen tv by a co-worker of Robb's that got fed up with the "Blair Witch Project" style flashing and had bought a new one.  Since these have no trade in value, he was going to pitch it.  After some research on the world wide interweb, Robb found that the problem was probably these little doodads and he brought the tv home.  It sat in one person's bedroom for many months with the promise that we'd order the capacitors and fix it for her.  It eventually died.  And we didn't remember to order the capacitors until this past week.  They took a while to get here but finally arrived late yesterday via UPS.  

The new ones were too big.  Almost twice the size and thickness of these...  I decided what's the worst that could happen??  It was already broken.   I had to do some creative tilting with the new capacitors.  

Sorry I didn't get a pic of THAT!  It looks hokey.

I got our trustworthy 50 year old soldering gun and got to it!!!  When I first started working at the job where Robb works, way back 25 years ago, I was given the job of learning how to solder computer cables.  It was the way things were done back then!  Well, the soldering iron isn't as trustworthy or hot as it used to be.  I was lucky to get it to melt the old solder at all...  It worked intermittently, so I "simply" "patiently" "may have sworn once" and let it heat up the old solder and I used that same solder to weld the new ones in.   

Held my breath as we plugged it in and voila!!!

The tv works now!!!

WHO'S the MAN!!!  Well, I am... sort of...

Have a great weekend full of things that work!