Lawns

They grow fast. And the lawnmower here is broken - it's a Mountfield, the blade hit the drive belt shield and smashed it, then when I went to repair that, the woodruff key fell into the lawn and I can't find it - so the blade isn't fully driven. Also, it's belching out smoke and the levers for height adjustment are shagged.

Should I try and find a secondhand lawn tractor (there's about 1/2 acre of lawn - plus potential field, though I reckon that'd need a REAL tractor) or just buy a cheap lawnmower to be getting on with? I need to cut the lawn before it gets silly but all the proper petrol mowers are £400 (I don't need drive, but I want mulching capability and a wide cutting deck; they seem incapable of delivering those without also including driven wheels). There are some interesting ones on eBay but I'm not sure the lawn is up to a cylinder mower (1950s ride-on with roller looks ideal for bowling-green lawn finish).

I'll look to see which model of Mountfield it is if anyone's got a broken one (knackered engine?) I could harvest for spares.

Happy but tired

I think I'm done carrying stuff; moved the rowing machine so now the treadmill, rowing thing and weights are all in a room with a TV and video thing and on the ground floor; tried a 5mph jog on the running machine, no instability at all. Yeay!

The new house is basically awesome. Some glitches; the dryer plug got REALLY hot, and caused an RCD to trip - I assume there was some contamination in the plug causing arcing, either way, need to replace a socket, and the epic bath of awesomeness can't really be a hot bath due to the feeble 55° C maximum setting and near 30' distance from the boiler. Have found deals on LPG, I reckon I can get it for 33p/litre, making a fillup £330 (presumably + 5% VAT). I've revised the heating programme so it's on as little as necessary for each floor. Still no progress on phones and thus, broadband, because BT's system have gone down. Epic.

The new office is brilliant, feels very secluded and officelike, but with this sort of view...



There has been massively varied weather, glorious sun and wind-lashing, rain sidewise little storms; unlike the old place, the storm stayed OUTSIDE.

As the boxes get unpacked, the house is becoming spacious again!

The music, the sun and my mood make me want to jump into a Mercedes SL and tear off down the A38 for no good reason other than to annoy commuters by being polite, cheerful and noisy.

Also: Note to anyone with cars with removable seats. Before offering lifts to people, try to remember if the requisite seats are installed ;)

Whoohooooo

Yesterday we saw Star Trek with prosperine and Carl; it's a decidedly awesome film.

Today I have added to the progress; got BT to hook up the lines!

This means by May 27th at the latest Sky won't be on our line, I'll have a new office number, we'll have a new home number, and two lines. To avoid the problems of WiFi, I'm also thinking that we can have two ADSL connections and two WiFi routers - the basic BT Total one with the 802.11n homehub for the house (which I believe will give a good range outdoors, since it will be located by the patio doors) and probably Be Pro with a Netgear hub for the office.

BMW needs to stop advertising the new Z4.