I had big dreams of getting a lawn mower and taking care of business this weekend. It came through just as well as my last Lotto ticket. I found an used mower for sale ($80) but the guy had to tune it up and sharpen the blades. So I get it today. Instead of mowing, I started edging the lawn with the help of my mom. I used her edger which is pretty much like a flat shovel that you stand on and you take out 5 inches of lawn at a time. As I was hopping up and down on the edger, one of my neighbors came out and said "Thank god! I'm so happy you're finally doing that!" I started to explain myself, telling my dumb story about being busy and not able to get a used mower cos I'm plain lazy. I didn't really care about my story, and I don't think she did either. "Are you going to trim the bushes in the back too?" Yes, eventually I will. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" My lawn is a bit scary, but it's not that bad. I should leave some lawn clippings on her step as a message. We ended up filling 2 1/2 lawn refuse bags from just the edgings. I'm a little aprehensive about how much crap I'm going to have when I do the actual mowings.

I finally got my 5.0 peak horsepower lawn mower today. Here are some before pictures. It's dark out now, so the after pictures will just look like a black room. I had to mow at the 6 setting and when I made my 2nd pass at the 2 setting the engine made a weird noise and died. Well, I figured, I got half of my front lawn done for a $80 mower, not too bad. I turned the sucker over and a strip of sheet metal was broken and had to be removed (it was hitting the blade.) So I started wrenching with it and got nowhere. Then I had the bright idea, "Hey, I still have Vince's grinder! That should take care of this." I whip out the heavy grinder and start going to town. Then I notice all of the sparks going everywhere and the smell of gas from the mower being turned over. I definetly did not want to be one of those guys you see on TV after they do something stupid, so I stopped. I eventually got the metal off by just wiggling it back and forth.
The wonderful front
The Savanna

For a long time I've thought of RSS feeds as being pretty useless for me. Then I realized I was spending a fair amount of time checking different websites to see if they've changed. Well, this is where RSS comes in. Some blogging software will produce a RSS xml file that gives a summary of what is on the website or webpage. My blogging software, for instance, puts a link on the top right side of my blog that reads XML. The link brings up an XML file that summarizes the last 15 or so entries. Other websites, like slashdot and wired have RSS feeds that you can check (don't check /. more often than every 30 minutes, they end up blocking your IP address.) So instead of manually checking your favorite websites, you can let your RSS aggregator do it for you. I wasn't able to find any decent ones until I upgraded my Opera browser that has a built in "Newsfeeds" reader. All I do is find someones RSS link, click on it and then my browser will automatically import the RSS xml and then monitor that link every X number of minutes. I came across a free web based RSS feed reader today, bloglines. It works well, you type in the URL of RSS feed and it will monitor the feed for you. Plus you can access your feeds from anywhere and you're not tied down to a client sitting on a certain machine. I really think it's nifty that you can have some program do your website checking for you. It could really free up a lot of time if you have tons of sites to visit to see new things.

Everyone who goes biking should have a biking partner like mine. He just called to confirm that we were in fact going riding today after work. The last 2 weeks he's had to bail for lame reaons like "My son is shipping off to Iraq tomorrow and this is the only night he's in town." Whatever -- I don't see the commitment. He said today, "Look, I haven't ridden in a while, so we're going to be moving slow." I pointed out that we always have equipment failure and that's a good reason to turn around. He laughed, "Well, I brought my knife so I can have an 'accidental tire blowout' and we can go drink beer." That's what I'm talking about, willing to sacrifice the bike to get some beer.

I've been slowly moving stuff into my house, I had just a couch for about a week and then last weekend my parents brought back my futon from the beach house. Yesterday I came back from the beach with my futon frame so I have a real bed and am not just sleeping on the floor. Then my parents brought over 2 tables and some chairs I had left at their place - it's like I have a real house now! Well, it's complete now because I put up my new training board above my hallway door. Hopefully it's screwed into the header correctly and I won't pull it down when I'm working on it. It has over 15 different holds and I can actually use about 4 of them, so I have a lot of room for improvement.

On Saturday Trey, Ron, Tubby T Tom and I rolled down the the McKenzie river east of Eugene for a little bike ride. We used my birthday (which is today, in case you haven't sent me my gifts yet) as an excuse to go riding. Since I seem to have lost my camera (which is a good excuse to buy the new 5.0 megapixel version), I have no pictures of the ride. Which is too bad because then I could show everyone where Trey biffed it. We were crusing down the singletrack with Trey in front of me and he tagged his right handlebar on a tree and started wee-wabbling. That lasted about 1/2 a second until he fell to the left. We happened to be on the section where the left side is a steep embackment that changes into a straight drop onto rocks in the river. Luckily for Trey, there was a little tree that stopped both him and his bike from being totalled. But he was ok, as was his bike and we continued on our merry way. After riding we had some dindin at a restaurant in Rainbow,Oregon which is next door to Nimrod, Oregon. The dinner was pretty good (since everyone else paid for it, hahah). As half the point of the trip was to soak in a hot tub after running into rocks and trees on the trail, we then proceeded to hang out in the warm pool. We got scolded by the old people from Cocoon for hogging the hot water. Apparently standing near the hot water outlet stops the water from getting to the wrinkled ones.

Well, it's time to get stuff for my new home, and what better place than craigslist? I realized a while ago that I don't have time to make all of the things I really want, like bookshelves, coffee table and TV stand. I already bought a fair amount of paduk wood for a coffee table, so I better just make that. I made a bookshelf a few years ago and really like it, it'll just take too long to make shelves for all of my books (and National Geographic magazines). A TV stand will have to be made, I think. So I've been visiting craigslist again and finding stuff to buy from there. I'm gonna see a teak bookshelf today, hopefully it'll be pretty dope.

I started working on my house this weekend. I was super ambitous and thought I'd get both rooms prepped and primed this weekend. I tried this orange solvent to strip the paint off of the nasty window frame in the bedroom. It seemed like it was working well, but turned out to be a pain in the ass to clean off. On my 4th (of 6) trips to Home Depot I picked up a cleaning bit for Ron's cordless drill to take the paint and solvent off from the small spaces. The brushes disintegrated within a few minutes and didn't get too much cleaning done. I ended up taking out my big carbide scraper and taking all of the paint off with that. My dad helped me fix the ceiling of the bedroom, there was some water damage and the plaster was coming off. I used my new cold chisel to take the plaster down. I then put up some gyp board and mudded it. On Saturday I took the carpet and padding out of the room. What was left was tack board along the walls and about 200 staples in the floor. I thought to myself, "Hey, I can take staples out no problem." The needle nose pliers couldn't get a grip on the staples, so I had to take a screwdriver and a rubber mallet to get them up a little. Then I took the pliers and pulled the staples out. My last project was to start taking the security bars off of the windows. I'm using my buddy Vince's grinder for this job. It seems to take about 3 minutes a bolt, not too bad. I'm wearing a tanktop on my head to cover my neck and face from the spark showers that erupt from the grinder (which looks pretty cool.) I got two windows cleared, just 8 more to go.

My house closed last Wednesday as I was sitting in Ron's truck on I-84 in Utah. Now I can get excited about buying picture molding hooks. I started my move last night by taking over a bottle of Vodka and Southern Comfort. I looked throughout the house and saw how much cleaning I'll be doing over the next few weeks. Fun stuff. The refrigerator is standing in front of the hallway door, so I think it's about time to get a sub-zero undercounter unit. I think the first thing I need is a pull up bar. Gotta have priorities.

Ron, Henry and I just got back from Moab this evening. It was an awesome time, we had good rides and no one got hurt. We rode Bartlett Slickrock, Monitor Merimack, Slickrock, the bottom of Porcupine Rim and Amasa Back. My brakes wonked out on me again so I ditched them to get some mechanical Avid disc brakes and they work really well. So I'll be trying to hock my other brakes after I get them warranteed. It was Jeep Jamboree week and we got to see the thousands of Jeeps and other four wheeled monsters. We hung out at Potato Salad to see if anyone would mess up their rigs, and came up flat. But we got to watch as people threw their vehicles up the wall and get heckled by the crowd. One guy in a Toyota was having a hard time getting up and got yelled at by a young girl "You want to use my winch!?!" That was pretty damn funny.
Jumping at Porcupine Rim