Saturday, April 01, 2006

roto-tilling the odds & ends

We’ve had two unused vehicles parked in our driveway for longer than I care to admit. One is a Nova from 1996 1986 that still runs (needs new brakes) and would, once in a while, just not start. I got it for nothing from my brother-in-law, who got it from his father, and it got me to Branford three times a week for a couple of years. By the time the odometer quit, it had more than 120,000 miles on it.

And Stanley has a van that he ran into the ground. It finally got more expensive to fix it (in terms of both time and money) than to get another decent used van. He doesn’t need anything fancy because he uses the van for work only.

We tried to donate these cars to the Kidney Foundation, but they were rejected as being too old and we were told it would cost us $35 per to “give” them to the charity. Nuts to that, Stanley said—we’ll just junk them at the junkyard. They’ll haul them away.

Only, in order for them to do that, ya hafta set it up. Time passed, we were busy, and before we knew it trees were sprouting through the rust spots. But this week, I’d finally had it with them and asked Stanley to get rid of them. Which he started to do—he used the van as a repository for the stuff that needs to go to the dump, and this week he emptied and made a couple of dump runs. We were getting so close to getting rid of them!

Today, it was so weird, but these people stopped by to ask if we were interested in selling the van and the Nova. The guy is a mechanic, and the woman has an equally old Nova hatchback, and they were interested in at least getting the vehicles for the parts. Selling them? Hah! Stanley told them, “If you haul them away, they are yours.” So, tomorrow, finally, oh please oh please, they’ll be gone. We even found the titles without much trouble. That’s a big one I can cross off my (or rather Stanley’s) to-do list.

LAWN STORY
Our lawn reclamation project from last year was a failure. We did get some more grass in the bare areas, but it look more like failed hair plugs than anything remotely resembling a lush lawn. Or even a non-lush lawn. Just a tuft here and there. We had to accept the fact that it is going to take some serious work to turn back into lawn. The ground resembles hardpan more than anything.

So Stanley asked me if I wanted a roto-tiller. Yes! So he ordered a Troy-Bilt for me. Via Amazon. And if finally shipped yesterday, though according to Fedex tracking it took a day to get from Northern Kentucky to Northern Kentucky. He says they’re walking it, which is why the estimated deliver time is between April 18 and May 4.

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posted by lee on 04/01/06 at 04:39 AM

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