One side effect of all this travel and work was that my lawn was way overdue to be mowed. My lawnmower was kinda old and had a couple of spots in the main shell where it had rusted thru and I’d patched it over with duct tape. Last time I mowed I heard a ka-rack noise, and after that the engine seemed a bit wobbly. After I was done mowing I peeled off the duct tape to see that the rust holes had joined to form a C-shaped void that left the engine attached to the shell on only one side! I thought for a while about various ways to fix it, but they all seemed potentially unsafe, or not worth the hassle. A replacement shell would have been $110 anyway, without knowing the availability. So I decided to go shopping for a new lawmower.
The sales people at Sears were dreadful and didn’t even know the diff between a 2- and 4-stroke engine. In the end, I guess a lawnmower is a lawnmower, and I ended up getting a basic one. Even though I’m a former professional landscaper, my yard is petty small so I figured the simpler the better. It took a while to put it together and siphon the gas out of the old mower into the new one, and by the time it was ready it was almost dark. The days are getting shorter already. The new mower started up on the first pull, and it’s lighter and more maneuverable than my old one, and mows more evenly, so I’m pretty happy with it. Now to figure out what to do with the old mower. I has a perfectly good engine, which I guess I’ll save to use in a robot someday.
Saturday was all kinds of yardwork and random tasks. I finally got to doing the gutters with Lizzy helping out with the ladder. Since we cut down the trees on the north side of the house it’s not nearly as bad as it used to be, so I removed the gutter guards. Sunday I got a chance to get back to origami and music. We also had a surprise visit from my homeslice Mark, in town from the Adirondacks to try and line up new tenants for his place in Brooklyn.