Oh' Happy Day

I had a great day today. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, the sky was crystal clear. It was hot, which means the girls were wearing almost nothing.

I woke up and started the day by heading to my local farmers market. My wife and I have been going there for a couple of years now. No packaging, no waste. Just good food that wasn't picked before it was suppose to, hasn't been frozen for 6 months before hitting the shelves.

Then we went to the butchers to buy our meat for the week.

Came home and put everything away and had breakfast. It was getting really hot outside and I had a mate who just got a motorcycle a few months ago, but barely ridden it come around for me to replace the broken clutch lever and replace the rear disc brake and brake pads. I had planned on also giving it a service but I didn't get to the bike shop during the week to buy the oils and filters needed. So I just changed the parts I already had.

Before he turned up, I decided to prepare my front lawn by doing some weeding. I'm not sure how weeds turn up and start growing, but there was a few with roots about 20 cm deep (About 8 inches in the old money and for my American readers). The heat was enough for me so I went inside and had some lunch and a cool lemonade.

My friend turned up on his bike and we got stuck into it. I pulled out my toolbox from my mechanic days seeing the light again for another few hours. 45 minutes later, I was washing up my soft, unhardened hands that use to cop abuse in the workshop, now aching from working with metal, hammers, levers and spanners.

I cleaned up my tool before putting them to bed. Sat down with my friend and chatted about all sorts of things. He then left, thanking me for the work.... it was nothing really. After all, he drove around with me while I was getting my car license after I recovered from my accident. It was the least I could do for all the help he gave me especially when he was studying hard at uni at the time.

I contemplated mowing my mutant lawn and planning on finishing just as the sun set. However, I decided that I'll stick to the plan and mow it all tomorrow. The lawn is mutant. I swear, it grows twice as fast as everyone else's on my street. It's not natural! hehe

I changed my mind and thought I'd wake up nice and early tomorrow instead and just do it then. So with that in mind, I was about to kick back in my living room and be lazy for the rest of the day. However, I remembered that my mower wasn't running right last time I mowed my lawns. So I decided to stop being a slacker and work on the mower.

I cleaned the air filter, checked the spark plug (probably should change it), but it was still good. The fuel filter was a bit harder to get to, so I thought I'd hold off till the next time I service it. I'll give it a full service. I checked over everything else, put some fuel in it, put the air filter back in, put the spark plug back in after checking the gap and filing the tip so it was nice and square again.

Fired her up and she purred pretty good. A hell of a lot better tan before. No more coughing, spluttering and surging. And I noticed it made mowing easier with the motor running at full speed all the time.

So I tested it out on the back patch of grass, and kept going. An hour later I was just about finished with the backyard. I came inside, showered and put on some fresh clothes. Exhausted from the busy day of manual work using my hands. I was happy that I didn't have to use my brain once. I didn't have to dig into the pipwiki. I didn't have to answer someone's questions, I didn't have to diagnose a problem. It was just "here's a job that needs to be done, so do it. And when you're finished, here's some more".

I'm not a very handy person. Ask my wife. She'll say, I'm everything but handy. I wish I were more handy, and I think I'll become more handy as I do more around the house like fix the guttering, replace the roofing on my shed and pull out the ceiling that's starting to droop because of the roof having holes and letting the weather in.

I've ended the day by making the bed and am pretty much ready for it.

So, good night all. I've had one of the most fulfilling days in a while.