Mulching With A Dead Battery

     This afternoon I engaged in an unusual activity for January: mowing the lawn! The weeds had been growing slowly but surely and had gotten my attention, but our recent weather front put them over the top. It was time to reclaim the yard. I filled the mower up with gas, turned the key, and got...... nothing?
It seems I forgot to disconnect the battery terminals at the end of the normal mowing season, oops. So I put the mower in neutral, pushed it out into the lawn, drove my truck up, and broke out the jumper cables. I actually had to read the tag in order to hook up the jumper cables, felt kind of silly doing that. I've got it now: bad battery red, good red, good black, bad black, start up bad vehicle, and do the reverse to uninstall. Worked like a charm and the mower was good to go. Just to make sure though I left the mower running while I moved the truck off the lawn and put the jumper cables away before using the mower. Last year I used my handheld blower to keep our 1.7 acre lot free of leaves, this year I got smart and just drove the mower slow with the blades down low. It still took about 3 hours to get the leaves to a satisfactory level of mulching, but that sure beat however long I stood out in the yard making my arm feel like jelly hauling the blower around last year. Tomorrow is the front half of the lawn since I only had time to take care of the back "forty".
     This evening the rest of the family went out for a shopping trip and milkshakes, they brought one home for me :D I stayed home and labored over Latin. I've switched up my study method and so far so good, I feel more comfortable translating, but I need to work on the vocab. list some more for this week. I then changed gears and worked on my writing class. I'm working through a book called Jensen's Format Writing and it rocks! It is a very challenging course (what I wanted) and has really pushed me to write better; at the same time, it has shown me the analytical process behind writing. I love analytical, and had a vague idea of how to use critical thinking/reasoning for writing, but this book has turned my light bulb on. Sometime pretty soon I'm going to start up another blog for school and I'll post my writing assignments as I finish them. The only other school course I've ever come close to enjoying as much as this one is geometry.
     Today I'm thankful for: 1) jumper cables so I don't have to bring batteries somewhere to get them charged, 2) milkshakes to satisfy my small sweet tooth, 3) great school classes, 4) a ride on mower instead of push, and 5) big windows in my room so that I can study by sunlight.
     Joke of the day: Tips to Improve Your Writing

1. Avoid alliteration. Always.
2. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
3. Employ the vernacular.
4. Avoid ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
5. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unneccessary.
6. Remember to never split an infinitive.
7. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
8. One should never generalize.
9. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than neccessary, it's highly superfluous.
10. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
11. Poofread carefully to see if you words or letters out.
12. A writer must not shift your point of view.
13. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of ten or more words, to the antecedents.
14. Writing carefully, dnagling participles must be avoided.
15. Every person should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.

Source: the 365 DAY Clean Joke Book