Wednesday morning started with a desire to work in the kitchen waiting for it to warm up outside. I am the kind of person that likes the warn to hot climate, especially with low humidity. I enjoyed the hot dry weather in Arizona when I lived there.
I spent the morning cutting out the counter tops and laying them on top of the base cabinets. I will not secure them until I am sure I don't need access into the base cabinets from the top. I will secure them just before I am ready to apply the laminate. I will show you what I did and hope I did on Friday and Saturday in the Monday blog entry. Nice change.
I spent the morning in the kitchen and then directed my attention to getting ready to mow the lawns. I got my tractor out and the mower deck; shown in the following picture. The deck is to roll under the tractor and be secured to the tractor. The power takeoff is to be hooked up and the four mower wheels are to be turned 90 degrees to face the direction of travel while on the tractor. Before doing the install I need to do spring maintenance on the mower; things like cleaning it up, grease the fittings, and sharpening the blades.
I used the loader on the tractor to lift up the mower so I could get to the blades, take them off and sharpen them. That is when I noticed a problem. When I removed the right blade I noticed it had worked lose on the spindle, even though the spindle bolt was tight. Maybe the blade had hit a solid object causing it to slip on the spindle and gradually it slipped more and more as it was showing signs of wear. The solution was to add another washer so the spindle bolt would draw the blade down tight on the spindle. I didn't have a washer big enough in the shop so I went to Home Depot only to find they didn't have one big enough either. Off to a farm store to find the part I needed.
Back home I sharpened the blades and reinstalled them. Cleaned everything up, greased the fittings, and hooked up the mower to the tractor and went to try it out. With sharp blades it did a nice job of cutting as you can see in the next picture.
After a couple hours of work - actually just riding around on the tractor - I got the lawns mowed. In the second picture you can see the edge of the road at the top of the picture. I mow the lawn along the highway, beyond what you can see.
After using the tractor to do the main lawn, I have a smaller hand mower to do the trim. I went to start it and it wouldn't start. I had to fuss with it to get it going. By the end of the day I was tired and a bit frustrated and since Connie was out for the evening I decided to watch a movie on a DVD. When I finished watching and went to bed the TV was working fine. In the morning I had no signal. It is now Thursday evening and I still haven't worked out the problem. As soon as I schedule this entry I will need to look at that problem again. All of this adds pressure as my departure date to China drawn near. Less than two weeks to go now.
