{"id":1181,"date":"2005-06-06T07:32:52","date_gmt":"2005-06-06T13:32:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/main\/?p=40"},"modified":"2013-02-23T05:08:27","modified_gmt":"2013-02-23T05:08:27","slug":"putting-off-yardwork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/2005\/06\/06\/putting-off-yardwork\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting off yardwork."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sure, it&#8217;s only about 7am, but what do I care.  I&#8217;m going to talk about putting it off.  Because I&#8217;m probably going to go to sleep soonish, and I feel like doing this.<\/p>\n<p>I got some done yesterday.  It&#8217;d been a little more than a week since I&#8217;d mowed the lawn.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m starting to really understand what they mean by &#8216;growing like a weed&#8217;&#8230;those damned things get tall fast.<\/p>\n<p>I think I&#8217;ll try to not put it off for so long next time.  I don&#8217;t want to burn out my mower.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s talk about that, shall we?<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nI like my lawn mower.  I really do.  I think it&#8217;s one of the coolest lawnmowers I&#8217;ve ever encountered.  It doesn&#8217;t need gas, and I don&#8217;t have to spend lots of time yanking on a stupid little bit of plastic attached to string just to get it going.<\/p>\n<p>Also, it doesn&#8217;t cost two bucks a gallon to run.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an electric mower.   Here, lemme show you&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>[Image removed due to issues.  If I get something better, I&#8217;ll put it back in.]<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s my mower.  It&#8217;s really not that much more compared to some of the gas mowers on the market &#8212; especially the self-propelled ones, which you just about need, given how heavy the damned things are.<\/p>\n<p>The cord thing isn&#8217;t so bad, so long as you&#8217;re aware of it.  I know a lot of people probably have a hard time being fully aware of their surroundings.  Make it easy on yourself if you decide to switch.  Get a bright orange one.  Or maybe a yellow.  Something that&#8217;ll stand out and catch your attention before you run over it.<\/p>\n<p>It really is quite nice.  The one-control-for-height-adjustment thing really works quite easily.  The plastic-ish [I don&#8217;t want to just say &#8216;plastic&#8217; because people will think &#8216;flimsy&#8217;] body makes it really nice and light, so, when I have to, I can manoeuvre it with one hand.  Both things coming from me means quite a bit.  I&#8217;m not exactly the strongest person in the world at this point, and my hands really kinda suck.<\/p>\n<p>It assembles very easily.  I don&#8217;t remember needing any tools at all, although I do recommend a good knife for hacking open the box.  That thing puts up a fight.<\/p>\n<p>What else&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Oh yes, the handle.  The handle was one of the deciding factors in purchasing this thing.  One of the others was two good &#8216;reviews&#8217; regarding the electric mower concept in general from two people I know in a chatroom.   The handle flips.  No more having to turn the mower around at the end of a row.  You just pull the little lever on the handle, and you can flip the handle and head back in the opposite direction.  This makes the whole &#8216;cord dance&#8217; thing much less of an issue than it would be if you actually had to do any real turning.<\/p>\n<p>The handle is also height-adjustable.  And it&#8217;s where the &#8216;on\/off&#8217; switch is &#8212; if you can call it a switch.  It&#8217;s a lot like gas mowers in this feature, except far less annoying.  There&#8217;s another little &#8216;lever&#8217; thingie that&#8217;s slightly &#8216;harder&#8217; to get to than the flip switch &#8212; which just means you really have to intend to do what you&#8217;re doing when you turn this thing on.  You get ahold of this particular thing and pull it up, holding it against the handle much like that &#8216;bar&#8217; that some mowers have and that&#8217;s what turns it on.  If you let it go, the mower shuts off.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;d be a little hard to actually get yourself under the blade while the mower was on, thanks to this feature.  And, unlike a gas mower, when you let go of this thing you aren&#8217;t doomed to pull-starting&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>If you just remember to not mow when the grass is really wet, and remember to mow before the grass is up to your knees, this thing does the job nicely.<\/p>\n<p>Also, it helps to have a smallish lawn.  Of course, if you have a largeish lawn, you might as well buy a riding mower&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>Not that anyone&#8217;s wondering, but the other other reason I bought this thing was because of those goddamn California Compliant things.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I know.  I live in Colrado, but so does some of California.  And I don&#8217;t really want to buy a lawnmower just to have to turn around and buy another one when it suddenly becomes environmentally unfriendlier, or something.   That, and I hate the idea of spending two bucks a gallon for gas, hauling it back, filling the mower, storing the extra gas, keeping around the oil and spark plugs and all that&#8230;it&#8217;s just easier and somewhat cheaper to vacuum the lawn.  A bit quieter too.  And not so vibratey.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve got a corded electric weedwhacker thingie of the same brand.  The cordless wasn&#8217;t that much more expensive, but it was a lot heavier.  Damned battery.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and Darth Mix M&#038;Ms are yummy.<\/p>\n<p><!--adsense--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sure, it&#8217;s only about 7am, but what do I care. I&#8217;m going to talk about putting it off. Because I&#8217;m probably going to go to sleep soonish, and I feel like doing this. I got some done yesterday. It&#8217;d been &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/2005\/06\/06\/putting-off-yardwork\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[58],"class_list":["post-1181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bib","tag-companies"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3bMfN-j3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1181"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1841,"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions\/1841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coffeechick.com\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}