Trip to Home Depot

Well as I mentioned in my last post I had to mow the lawn this weekend. That required me having to buy a lawn mower, which apparently is not such an easy task this late in the season. I drove up to our local Home Depot hoping to buy a little electric mower that would easily handle our relatively small lawn. The week before we had been there and they had had a discount on fully assembled mowers, which we had no room for at the time. I thought nothing of it and assumed that they would keep a stock of mowers on hand at all times. So imagine my surprise when I asked someone if they had any lawn mowers (after looking unsuccessfully for about 5 minutes), to hear that they only had two. "Only two styles to pick from?" I asked. "No, just two lawn mowers." was the response. Ugh. So, not wanting to have to drive halfway across the city to find a mower I went out to look at them. Luckily there was a nice 4.5 HP Briggs and Stratton mower there that I approved of and, due to its clearance nature, it was only $70. So I decided to go for it, and I picked up a snow shovel while I was at it. Always be prepared I figure. So after a quick trip to the gas station to buy gas, I returned home with my purchases. Unfortunately the lawn mower did not come with any instructions so I kind of had to wing it. After I had put in oil and gas, and made several pulls on the starter it was evident that winging it was not going to work. But a few google searches later I had the instruction manual for the Briggs and Stratton engine that gave me the secret. Apparently their attempt to prevent people from chopping off fingers and toes had thwarted me from starting the mower at all. So after activating the safety bar, a single pull got me up and running. I picked the right day to mow the lawn too, as by the time Sunday night rolled around it was clear that the other item I had purchased would come in handy as well. By the time the snow ended yesterday we accumulated more than 16 inches. It was the wet heavy stuff too. Oh well, it's a lot easier to shovel when you know that it will all be gone in a couple of days, I'll probably be mowing the lawn again this weekend.