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captainsblogAs usually is the case after a three-day weekend here, the first day back was mondo buckets of insane. From fighting with a court computer at 3 a.m. (hell, I had the wakeys and nothing better to do at that hour) to the phone and email machines firing up promptly at 8, all the way through the one client call I still need to make more than 12 hours after that, I'm damn looking forward to the coming NON-holiday weekend.
Still, it hasn't been without happy moments. As you may have seen on Eleanor's blog, she volunteered to do some of the mowing for our neighbor Betty. She's been a dear soul and friend since not long after the day we got here, despite her husband of our first 12 years on the block being something of an OCD shit about things like mowing. For whatever reason, his wife still retains that desire to keep everything neat and tidy outside 365 days a year, so when she recently came down with a really nasty bug, becoming too ill to push a mower (or even to call out across the street to a passing band of landscrapers offering to pay them for a one-time cleanup job), Eleanor very wonderfully stepped in and offered to do at least some of the area nearer to our own yard.
But with what?, you may ask. After all, our own WALL-E for that purpose crapped out on me over the weekend, and no replacement parts were in the offing. Turned out, the old boy is about as adaptable as his film namesake. Recall his basic design, as seen here the other day, with two key points highlighted in this pic showing his design defects:
The mower came with two metal bars running from the wheels to the stem. These connect to the top half of the handles through the pair of bolts circled in blue above, and it was the top-half connectors in these junctions that died, in duplicate, on Saturday. Now I still had an old top half with functional connectors at that junction, but its problem was it had almost completely broken at the upper single-bolt joint tying it to its mate, circled in red above. With a prayer and a song in my heart, I replaced that top half with the almost-dead older version, and that was enough for Eleanor to get the job done between our front yard and Betty's. Finally, though, it gave up the ghost before it could be reinforced.
But did it have to be?
Just for giggles, I tried reinstalling one of the two still-boltable upper halves of one side's handle to the top half, sticking its kinda dangly bottom right next to where the older, but still-boltable, lower half was still holding together. The result, in six words? It ain't pretty, but it'll do:
The resulting beast requires something of a complex weight-training maneuver: you kinda hafta push down on the left handle while pulling up on the right to maintain the equlibrium of the thing. (Oddly enough, in a bunch of exercises we wound up doing in class tonight, that same grip was the key to the particular training.) It's not a long-term solution by any means, and I have an 800 number for the manufacturer to see how many of these parts I have to order at once to get a bulk discount, but at least we'll be able to beat back the grass, and Betty's anxieties, while we wait for that solution.
----
I was also totally, blessedly, blown away today by the generosity of a friend. On Friday of last week, I learned of the death, earlier in the month, of a fellow fan of one of my sports teams, who was beloved and respected among the community of bloggers and other writers of the team. I tossed out An Idea about how to honor his memory, and instead of just answers, I got an offer of help above and beyond anything I ever would have expected. I will be doing a fair piece of work to make this happen, too, and both friend and I are dependent on the kindness of others (many of them, indeed, strangers, even to me) to make it happen in a timely manner, but I thank you and respect you, as well, and you know who you are.
Still, it hasn't been without happy moments. As you may have seen on Eleanor's blog, she volunteered to do some of the mowing for our neighbor Betty. She's been a dear soul and friend since not long after the day we got here, despite her husband of our first 12 years on the block being something of an OCD shit about things like mowing. For whatever reason, his wife still retains that desire to keep everything neat and tidy outside 365 days a year, so when she recently came down with a really nasty bug, becoming too ill to push a mower (or even to call out across the street to a passing band of landscrapers offering to pay them for a one-time cleanup job), Eleanor very wonderfully stepped in and offered to do at least some of the area nearer to our own yard.
But with what?, you may ask. After all, our own WALL-E for that purpose crapped out on me over the weekend, and no replacement parts were in the offing. Turned out, the old boy is about as adaptable as his film namesake. Recall his basic design, as seen here the other day, with two key points highlighted in this pic showing his design defects:
The mower came with two metal bars running from the wheels to the stem. These connect to the top half of the handles through the pair of bolts circled in blue above, and it was the top-half connectors in these junctions that died, in duplicate, on Saturday. Now I still had an old top half with functional connectors at that junction, but its problem was it had almost completely broken at the upper single-bolt joint tying it to its mate, circled in red above. With a prayer and a song in my heart, I replaced that top half with the almost-dead older version, and that was enough for Eleanor to get the job done between our front yard and Betty's. Finally, though, it gave up the ghost before it could be reinforced.
But did it have to be?
Just for giggles, I tried reinstalling one of the two still-boltable upper halves of one side's handle to the top half, sticking its kinda dangly bottom right next to where the older, but still-boltable, lower half was still holding together. The result, in six words? It ain't pretty, but it'll do:
The resulting beast requires something of a complex weight-training maneuver: you kinda hafta push down on the left handle while pulling up on the right to maintain the equlibrium of the thing. (Oddly enough, in a bunch of exercises we wound up doing in class tonight, that same grip was the key to the particular training.) It's not a long-term solution by any means, and I have an 800 number for the manufacturer to see how many of these parts I have to order at once to get a bulk discount, but at least we'll be able to beat back the grass, and Betty's anxieties, while we wait for that solution.
----
I was also totally, blessedly, blown away today by the generosity of a friend. On Friday of last week, I learned of the death, earlier in the month, of a fellow fan of one of my sports teams, who was beloved and respected among the community of bloggers and other writers of the team. I tossed out An Idea about how to honor his memory, and instead of just answers, I got an offer of help above and beyond anything I ever would have expected. I will be doing a fair piece of work to make this happen, too, and both friend and I are dependent on the kindness of others (many of them, indeed, strangers, even to me) to make it happen in a timely manner, but I thank you and respect you, as well, and you know who you are.