All In

Sometimes I can be such a doofus.  And what doofusy thing did I do this time?  Well, I'll tell you.

As if picking the hottest day of the year to blow out my tire wasn't enough, I decided to mow the next day.  I didn't just mow, either.  I weedeated, too.  

Those of you who've read this blog for any length of time know I have a love/hate relationship with my weedeater.  I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I can't get the string wrapped around the spool correctly so that it feeds out more line when you bump the bumping thingy.  I have to stop weedeating, turn the thing off, and manually reel out more line.  Still, I persevered and got most of the yard done before I gave up in frustration and put the thing away.  

I'd thought that if I got started early enough, I could get the job done before it got too hot.  I thought wrong.  Oh, it wasn't that hot, but the humidity more than made up for it.  It was 90% when I started, and had only dropped to 64% by the time I finished.  All that to say, starting at 6:30 -- as soon as I heard the neighbor across the street get into his truck and drive away-- did me absolutely no good.  For the second day in a row, I completely sweated down.   

Once I was finished, I came inside, took a shower, and stayed in the air conditioning the rest of the day.  And drank a lot of water.  And watched Gladiator for the first time in ages, while working on a new hat. 

I should probably also mention that I finished the Legend trilogy by Marie Lu.  It was pretty good, but was one of those trilogies that should have been shortened into a two book series, or even a stand alone novel.  The first book was fascinating, captivating, and I couldn't put it down.  By the second book, the story had begun to drag... and drag....and drag.  It had a good ending though, and the story would have been much stronger had she cut out all the empty filler she'd needed to stretch it out into a trilogy. 

Now I've started the Variant series by T.C. Edge.  I'd started this one before, but only got a short way into book one when I set it aside to read something else, so I went back to the beginning and started over.  It seems OK so far.  I'll let you know.  

That brings us to today.  It's been a true day of rest for me, as I've stayed inside and relaxed most of the day, other than to get out and cut some more pineapple sage to start drying. 

If I keep this up, I might have to invest in an herb grinder.  The mortar and pestle is fun, but it takes a long time to get the herbs ground up with it.   It's still useful if I just want to bruise a few leaves to make tea with, but to grind a lot at a time -- like to fill jars for Christmas gifts -- I'm sure a grinder would be much more efficient. 

The only other thing I've done is to get Snow's old tank ready for a new inhabitant. 

No, I'm not getting a new snake.  I'm going to move Blaze from this tank into Snow's. 

That way, I can move that old tank out and get this corner cleaned up.  

I need to see if Cody and Brennan might want the tank for one of their critters.  Otherwise, I'm going to sell it.  By the way, that table is an old sewing machine that was given to me.  I've never used it for that, and frankly, don't even know if it works.  It's had a snake tank on it ever since I've had it.  I'll probably just offer it up for free to anyone who wants to come get it. 

I reckon that's about all I have for today, so I'll stop boring you with my drivel.  

Laters.