Possumblog

Boy, it's hot.

I tell you, there's something to this whole global warming thing. I remember that it wasn't even six months ago and it was freezing cold, and now it's blazing hot. Weird.

GOOD MORNING!

A very acceptable weekend--got the grass cut finally. Took a while--Catherine, of all people, wanted to help. I got her to go put on a pair of jeans and a regular pair of shoes, and let her cut about three or four passes and the allure--such as it is--quickly evaporated. Too hot, too dusty, too much interference from Dad who insists the lines be perfectly straight.

Further slowing things down was a clogged air filter. Puttering along and then it just wheezed to a stop. Took it over to the garage door and got my screwdriver and opened the cover and it was like opening a can of dirt. Tapped out as much as I could (because I didn't want to have to stop and go buy a new filter) and put it back on and was ready to go. Cut, mow, cut, mow, empty bag, cut mow cutmowcutmow.

And then---brrrrrrrrPOPBANG!

That was a very weird noise. Everything was fine and then it blowed up or something.

Stopped and looked, and discovered that the spark plug had been blown out of the cylinder head! Now I've never seen anything like that. I don't know if I had at some time in the past pulled the plug and didn't torque it back down tight or what, but apparently it's been running like that for a while, and finally managed to vibrate itself loose before being shot out the end of the engine. Good thing it was still connected by the plug wire or it would have shot across the street.

The rest of the cutting was uneventful. If dusty. Did I mention how dusty it was? And hot? Because it was.

After that, it was off to go look for something to go inside the Children's Large Fabric Playhouse. (No one appreciated my joke about Paddy O'Furniture.)

Went to K-Mart, went to Sam's, went to Wal-Mart. Finally found the one we thought would be just right. They were sold out of it. Went to the next closest Wal-Mart down the road in Roebuck. They had it, and it was on sale same as it was closer to home. The problem?

Absolutely the slowest induhviduals (thanks to Scott Adams) in the world assigned to go get it out of the stockroom and bring it to the curb. A smaller problem is that it came in two boxes, and one of the boxes was huge. The chairs weren't knocked down, but were already assembled, and so the box took up the entire back end of the van.

Whatever--we did manage to get it home and unloaded and put the table together and set out on the platform and it looks pretty darned good. Even if I didn't get the glider I wanted.

Best part?

Well, after church last night, the kids wanted to go out there and eat supper and play cards. I lit up the Coleman lantern, they got their food and cards, and spent an enjoyable hour or so out there. Sure, they had bugs and odd noises and not a lot of light to see what was going on, but they had a good time and managed not to kill each other. In fact, they enjoyed spending time together and didn't require electronic stimulation.

That's hard to beat.

ANYway, more later--I have to go sit in the Monday morning meeting and pretend to be awake.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at June 11, 2007 08:24 AM