14 June 2024

The second round of mowing was more eventful than the first. Today I was mowing the front lawn and there is an area where the tree guy mulched up branches from the downed tree dispersing them onto the lawn. While driving around the mulched area I went over a big piece of wood and a mower blade got stuck. When the blades get stuck, usually from too much grass at once, the engine shuts down. My theory is is things stop moving, that floods the engine with fuel and stops movement. At first I didn’t like gas engines because I didn’t understand how they work. The more I know the better I’m seeing the connections in a gas engine, whereas if something breaks with an electric component, the whole tool is likely trash. With my mower stranded in the front yard I assessed the situation, the blade was into the wood deep enough that I couldn’t pull it out and the piece of wood was so big that there wasn’t anywhere for me to attempt to pull it off to. With the blades turned off I started the mower and drove back to my shed where there was shade and tools. The solution came in the form of a hatchet, I began chopping at the wood until it was small enough to move around and I had made room for the blade to wiggle out. That’s when I noticed how much damage my blades have been through, they’re frayed on the ends. I’d like to put some mulching blades on to go through the woods and then get new grass ones. My brother told me how replacing the blades should be easier than I thought, that the mowing deck comes off and then I don’t have to work underneath the mower. The lose I encountered was another screw for the pully covers, at least now I know where to get more.

13 June 2024

Mowing went well yesterday and I’m preparing for more today, nothing eventful happened as I was only cutting grass. There was a time when after I had gone over an area that I noticed a long black snake, the same as I saw on the back end of my property months ago. The species is called black runner I believe and they’re protected in this area, so I didn’t mess with it. When the grass grows long all sorts of wild life begin to inhabit it, it’s hard to believe when we were walking around in the tall grass we could have been a couple feet away from a snake. On a previous mow I saw a tortoise running for cover after I expose it’s resting spot, it was surprising the shell didn’t get hit by the mower. After all mowing there are field mice running around. The check up on the bees also went well, they hadn’t finished the sugar water I gave them that was almost three weeks old now which means they’d rather get their own food from the wild. When dealing with the bees I’m trying to get in and out as quick as possible, so I poured more food and left. Next time I visit I’ll probably removed the container for feeding and let them have more room. They are still building their own combs perpendicular to the manmade ones provided, but have hit the wall and now I’m hoping they’ll make use of my frames. Because the bees are building freely they build onto the roof which I have to rip off everytime I enter and it reveals little amounts of honey they’ve made. There are other frames I can put on top for them to continue growing, they still need to be assembled. 

12 June 2024

There’s a lot of mowing that needs to be done, last night my mower belt got delivered. I installed the belt and mowed some grass around the pole barn to make sure everything was working. The new bolts I got to attach the pulley covers worked well. An unexpected problem was some bug had covered the hole where the key goes with dirt, I was able to push the key through and pull it out enough times to clear the dirt so I could start the mower. Hopefully I’ll get a good chunk of grass done today, first the bees are overdue for a feeding. The process of feeding the bees has gotten pretty streamlined and it shouldn’t take long. With starting to mow again I also started up my audiobook, and the place in the book(Chronicles of Narnia) I left off at was right before the characters were to begin a new adventure, so I felt it was appropriately timed. All I can think of now is going around in circles cutting grass, I’m going to do that and will let you know tomorrow how it went. There will also be more mowing tomorrow and then again next week.

11 June 2024

After dropping the baby off this morning I swung by ACE hardware again since last time I forgot to look for lawn mower belts and other things. The store didn’t carry belts big enough, the other items on my list were more sand to weigh down a shade canopy and a hose for a refrigerator ice maker. After the last sand debacle I layed a tarp in my trunk and told my wife of course it won’t make a mess this time, it was even worse as the store was sold out of sand bags. Thankfully I did get the hose I needed for the fridge, we’ve been waiting a long time for this part as I’ve been trying to figure out what the part we needed was exactly. Last night my wife was able to do some research and solve the question, I know there are gaps in how I learn and am eager for her to help with projects. Manual labor is no problem for me, but I read fairly slow making the research side of things take a long time. Once I was home I was able to connect the hose while boiling some water to make syrup for the bees. After that I needed to do mowing around the pool with the push mower and I made some walking paths to the woods and trampoline since it’s the best I can do. There are ant hill on the boarder of the pool grass and I finally got around to spraying them. Finally I used the head trimmers to clean up a couple areas, first was where a tree was removed earlier this year, the roots underground had sprouted branches in about a 30 foot area. Since I don’t want to risk driving the mower over the stump area I needed to clear that up, then I trimmed back bushes that were touching the house. Here’s a photo of a cute church I saw on the way to ACE.

10 June 2024

Hopefully everyone had a good weekend, I don’t remember much from my weekend, so I assume it was pretty standard with a lot of baby games. My daughter started showing affection to a stuff Mickey mouse, it’s the first time she’s really played with a stuffed animal. She likes to push a toy stroller around and whenever I’ve tried to put something in the seat she will immediately throw it on the ground. As I was leaving this morning I noticed another limb had fallen from the dead tree. Before I had mentioned a tree that is dead and doesn’t know it, this is a tree that is dead and knows it, thankfully it’s fairly straight and unlikely to fall over because dealing with a tree that big would be a pain. The limbs on the tree have been falling down with some regularity and I stack them at the trunk. It’s not very visible in the photo, but the limb that fell last night was hanging over the driveway, it was the only one I’ve worried about falling as I drive under. The branches that broke from the fall were easy enough to clean up, the limb luckily made a bridge over the water way as not to disturb anything because it’s not getting moved anytime soon. Over the next couple months it will continue to degrade and I’ll jump on it to break it into manageable pieces. An event that did happen over the weekend was my Youtube channel for the podcast hit 100 subscribers, it was only a couple weeks ago that I was getting excited about getting 40 and as I write this it’s already up to 119. Once the ball gets rolling it gathers momentum. There’s a lot of individual skills I’ve improved to create that growth and I imagine there are more I will have to learn in order to get to higher levels.

7 June 2024

On the podcast last night I talked about how every task becomes more complicated with a kid. We went to the grocery store this morning and there were plenty of example of how the shopping was made more complicated. Even though we’re only driving 10 minutes down the road, we’ve got to have snacks packed and a bottle of milk. Of course I’m always paranoid an employee is going to think she’s eating store food, so I put snacks in sandwich bags. Before even starting the car, my daughter wanted some time driving it and pressing buttons. Then we were off and in that short drive she finished her milk, this can be a scary situation because milk is the best way to calm her from a tantrum. Thankfully there were no major meltdowns today, just a gradual dislike of being in the shopping cart, it started with taking her boots off and I had to help take her socks off since she could reach them. In all her twisting she somehow managed to get both legs in one of the leg holes. Around that we had gotten to the check out and the cashier must of have been newer since the person before me got a lot of produce and she had to keep asking what things were than looking them up. She was young and I remember working as a grocery store cashier when I was 17 doing the exact same thing. By the time we were up I needed to be holding baby to avoid a fight. For fun she likes to jump out of my arms, so task was complicated by keeping a hold of her, putting the bags in my cart and finding my wallet with one hand. When it’s all done she gives me a hug and it’s worth it. 

6 June 2024

Not much got done the past couple days, I needed some rest, can’t keep burning the candle at both ends. Allergies are hitting hard this year as we’re not in a warmer climate, there are plants growing here that couldn’t at our previous location, I can even grow citrus now. The ball is back rolling today, I went to ACE hardware to get screws for the mower and some sandbags for an umbrella holder. As I was loading up one of the two sandbags I felt some sand on my hand and decided it wasn’t a big deal. Fast forward to when I’ve arrived at home and my trunk was a sandy mess, that’s what happens when you’re in a rush caring about time over quality. Then I had to waste more time cleaning up the sand than I would have if I swapped it for a new bag. Finishing up with the sand I had some podcast ideas I wanted to record, so I knocked that out and while I was dressed in my kingly outfit, took some photos for thumbnails. The program Canva has been helpful in a lot of image creation, it even utilizes AI. There hadn’t been a purpose for AI in my life until now, people would show different images it creates, but they had no value; it was just a trick. I believe in fine art as art where the reality of paint strokes can be felt. AI is useful to me for churning out images quickly as ascents. Now I’ll do some editing of the stuff I created and we’re recording tonight. We’re past all the shocking content, so it’ll be nice to relax with some multidimensional musings. 

4 June 2024

Today is the earliest my replacement mower belt can arrive, checking on the tracking it doesn’t seem likely. To prepare and possibly speed things up I’ll go to ACE hardware and see if they sell the belt I need, I need to go there anyway for bags of sand and to match a screw. The sand is for the base of an umbrella stand and the screw is actually mower related. Around the mower belt pulleys are metal covers held in place by two screws, I’m guessing I hadn’t been tightening them all the way and have lost two screws. Since there is a pully on each side I still have enough to attach one cover, but I’m hoping to find some replacements at the store. Since my Youtube presence has gotten off the ground I turned my attention towards Spotify today. Every platform has it’s own rules and regulations, it gets frustrating trying to fit them all. Even this website has it’s limitations. In making an ad for my podcast I needed to record a 30 second audio clip and got frustrated when I tried to upload it. I recorded on the same platform I record the podcast, so I thought it’d be easy. My first attempt was with an MP3 file, it was rejected telling me it needed to be in stereo, I don’t know what to do with that info as it seemed to be in stereo. Next I reprocessed the clip and saved it as a WAV file, when I tried to upload that, my rejection note was “check creative guidelines”. Too bad there was no link in sight to check those guidelines, I went through a couple programs to record audio until I made progress with Garageband. Thankfully I have been learning Garageband to prepare for making an intro for the show. The problem then was the audio sounded much different, but after some tweaking everything got resolved and submitted, now I can return to the physical world.

3 June 2024

Happy June everyone. Last Friday was indeed a good day, the short video I made did better than I would have ever hoped and my Youtube channel has nearly doubled in subscribers since then. The only goal I know of for Youtube subscribers is 1,000, so I had said we’ll get that by the end of the year. When I said that it felt unrealistic, as time goes on I’m figuring out how the systems work and am gaining speed to where that goal seems more possible. This doesn’t mean all I care about is views and subs, but that’s feedback. For months trying to get feedback from people is like pulling teeth, this is a new endeavor where things are far different than my normal life, any information I can get is useful. The other big event on Friday was at the end of the day I looked out my window and saw the neighbor across the street had put out a UTV for sale. We have been looking at various options for weeks, the conclusion I came to was the nice ones would cost too much and the ones in my price range would leave my mind uneasy. The other problem I was faced with was how to get it home, I don’t have a truck anymore nor a trailer. The vehicle my neighbor put out was in my price range and nicer than anything I was looking at, he even drove it to my doorstep. It’s electric and can be charged with a regular outlet, which is what I was hoping for. Being able to work on a gas engine would be a valuable skill though I’m happier to not deal with one at all. My daughter is obsessed with cars and was screaming with excitement just to sit in it. She’s already claimed it as her own and will push me out of the driver’s seat.