Raiders of the Lost Blog

So the foot and a half of grass in the back yard finally had to be dealt with this weekend. I did some research and decided to pick up a manual mower and a cordless electric weed whacker.

I didn’t want to deal with gas for either device. They’re a pain to start, cost more to run, and break down a lot more. For the mower, I went with the Scotts 20″ Classic Push Reel Mower. From the research I’ve done it’s a lot nicer to your grass, really isn’t that hard to push, and doesn’t require any fuel, just muscle. The only downside is that the grass has to be below a certain length or it won’t cut.

Gas mowers have a circular motion that just sucks up and slices anything in its path. Push reel mowers work with shorter grass to maintain it, but longer grass just bends down when the blades go over it and then bend back up afterwards.

So, to get started I also needed a trimmer. Again I didn’t want to deal with gas so I went for a cordless electric trimmer. The Black & Decker 12″ Grasshog Cordless String Trimmer. It comes with 2 batteries, each was enough to get one yard - one for the front, one for the back. Takes about 3 hours to charge up, and I had to use it a lot more than normal because I was trimming the entire lawn so I could mow.

It has a lot of power and has an autospooling feature so you don’t have to bump it to get more string to come out. Very nice, but I imagine it’ll go through string a lot faster. Still, not having to deal with gas is a huge advantage for me, and I have a really small lawn.

So I trimmed and mowed everything back into shape. I had to pick up some Round-up to kill off some weeds, but otherwise it’s looking good. Now to get a rake and clean out some left over sticks & leaves…

Burger King made this site, it’s a 20 questions sort of thing with Darth Vader. Check out The Sith Sense. For the record, he did guess “Godzilla” correctly.

Well, intership time is over. Dan was out here in New York for about four and a half months. So long MTV! Now it’s back to school. I hope he had a good time here, it was fun having him stay with us in the exciting cork room. (One of our rooms has a wall covered in cork of all things!) Good luck finishing school Dan, I’ll miss ya!

Should be a fun year too, with the new house and getting married to the best gal in the world, Chris!

Tonight we’re going to Nobu for dinner. It’s one of Dan’s last days in New York and we want to take him out as an early birthday dinner for him too.

Sunday we had a birthday party/Mother’s Day BBQ. I roasted up some turkey on the grill, some steaks & corn on the cob. Chris’s family came up as did my cousin Rich & his girlfriend Ashley. Gotta say the turkey’s always a hit at these things!

Here’s a picture of my birthday back in 1995. Dig that huge birthday cake / twinkie!

Check this NY Times article for the full story. Stephen Colbert is getting his own show! Sweet!