Dogs, Turtles, Mowers and Keys

Me and my 'snuggle buddy'. A great way to relax in the evenings.

Meet the O'Mally's...Grumpy (top of picture), Little George (to the left) and Grace (bottom center). Grace is becoming a bit more active and not hiding out all of the time. She is not eating enough to be ready to hibernate yet, but I think she is doing better.


OK, a couple reasons for this picture. First of all, Stan told me he expected to see one on the blog, so here it is. Second reason is the story behind it. I had the church riding lawn mower worked on in late February/early March because it would not start. It took 4 or 5 weeks (literally!) to get it back from the shop. When I got it back, it still did not run right. Have had problems with it all summer. Last week, tried to mow with it and it would not start. Asked a friend from church to look at it. He took the carburetor apart and then put it back together. This seemed to fix the problem...until the next time I got the mower out to mow. Point being: we got a new mower today and this is what it looks like.

But I do have to tell one more funny story (yeah, it is funny now) about getting this mower. It all started this morning when Stan agreed to help me got pick out and pick up a mower. I gave him my church keys (20 keys on two rings) so he could unlock the church trailer and hook it up to his truck. He hooked up the trailer while I grabbed my wallet and we were off. When we stopped for gas, I noticed the trailer hitch was not locked down. Stan wondered where the lock was, but I figured he had laid it on the ground when hooking up the trailer and then forgot about it. No big deal...I'd just get my keys and the trailer lock when we got back to church. Well, when we got back to church, guess what we found (more accurately, what was NOT found!). We looked everywhere on the church property where we had driven, and we even retraced our route all the way back to the highway...to no avail. I had to pick up a friend and Stan had to go back to Sears to make another pickup. So while I was on my way to pick up my friend, I was trying to make a mental note of all the keys I had lost and where a second copy of each of these keys was so that I could get copies made. Stan, on the other hand, travelled back to Sears praying hard and keeping an eye out for my keys. Stan must be a man of faith because he found my keys (all 20 of them) still intact and attached to the trailer lock several miles from the church on the frontage road where we turned off to go to Sears. My keys had been run over a couple times, but it was nothing a pair of pliers couldn't fix. So today was a good day. Got a new mower and found my keys.

- Rob