On Friday I mowed the lawn and I discovered a couple of things. First, our little electric lawn mower is really not big enough for the lot. I mean the front yard alone is as big as all the grass at the Rutherford House. Then there’s the back yard that’s twice as big as the front. There’s a LOT of grass to cover and with a 13” mover and that means a lot of walking back and fourth. I trudged around and shifted the cord for over two hours. The second thing was a surprise. The next day I expected to be very sore. I was surprised to find that I felt fine. Fine except for my elbows. They were stiff and sore. They were so painful in fact they woke me up on Saturday. I guess I’ve been neglecting them. I’ll need to do a lot more 12oz curls from now on.

Actually I expect I’ll be able to work on the arms more. The electronics in my treadmill have failed in a really weird way. When it’s running it feeds electrical noise back into the house. It’s blown our computer network router. It was screwing up the clocks. I’m going to open it up this weekend and take a look. I suspect though that it’s time for a new one. In the mean time I’ll work out with the bow-flex, and hand weights, more. At least that will strengthen the elbows for the next time I mow.

But mowing should not be as strenuous next time either.

This weekend we ran across a deal that was just too good to pass up. I mean we’re watching our money closely right now. We’re putting off buying things that aren’t essential, like a new treadmill. We aren’t in trouble and we just want to keep it that way. Well on Saturday we were at Home Depot to pick up a couple of things and Marsha came across a mower in the clearance section. I kept saying we should wait right now. Wait until I find another job. We might end up paying more next spring but we should wait. The mower though was a 19”, cordless electric, self powered unit. It was exactly what we’d been looking for so despite my protests Marsha got someone over and we asked him about the price. It was marked $499 but the tag didn’t say anything about clearance or closeout or anything. He thought it was the right price but he went to check. I went along with it mostly to humour Marsha because I thought even at $399 it was still something I didn’t want to spend right now. Well, he came back shaking his head. He said hadn’t expected it to be marked down but he could give it to us for $249. That was 50% off the price it was marked which was already a bit below list. Well, it didn’t take us long to decide. So now in the garage is a large box with our new mower. And hopefully it’ll be easier on the elbows.

On another subject most of you have heard that Steve Jobs passed away this week. For a list of his accomplishments see this article:
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/steve_jobs_a_revolution_every_other_year/

Revolutions with both Apple AND Pixar, truly an amazing accomplishment. I’ve seen Jobs compared to Thomas Edison which is interesting. It’s not well known but Edison did not in fact invent the light bulb. He bought the patent from a couple of Canadian inventors, refined and improved the design and marketed it well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Woodward_(inventor)
Jobs 2, Edison 0,
Take that history.

And finally Monday is Thanksgiving up here. We’re going to Barbara's Sunday for the celebration. Of course we’ll be there Monday as well. Leftovers are a great thing. We’ll be hoisting a pint in memory of Steve Jobs. (Just for the elbow exercise of course.)

Doug and Marsha

PIX Another great sunrise. This has been a weird week. The afternoons haven't been bad. There have been some beautiful sunrises. And every day between 1 and 3 AM it has rained. Not just a sprinkle either. A driving, gushing rainfall that fills the gutters and is so loud it bothers the cats. Then a couple of hours later there's a beautiful sunrise and in the afternoon it's been nice.


Happy thanksgiving, you jive turkey,.
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