Busier than busy

So with finals behind, you'd think things would start calming down. Not true. It's more like the floodgates have opened. All of our friends are academics too, so they're starting to throw those end-of-term parties and relearning to search each other out socially. So despite there officially not being school, we have some kind of appointment every day all week long. That will be trying on Linda's endurance.

Yay, no more mowing

My John Deere lawn tractor is giving me fits. It limped through mowing the lawn yesterday, and I took it in this morning after a lot of personal troubleshooting. I figured that it would probably pay in the end to buy the engine manual for the mower engine, so I have a reference at hand.

Something is wrong with the left cylinder (it's a two-cylinder engine). According to the book, the 2-cylinder engines can run just fine (but underpowered) on one cylinder until they are overwhelmed by load. That's true. I could pull the spark plug wire off the left plug, and the engine would purr (although I was getting mildly electrocuted). Obviously the right cylinder works fine. Reversing and removing the right plug definitely leaves the engine in a sickly state.

So yesterday, I went in to ask about this behavior with the mechanics at the local JD place. They said, Bring it in before the warranty expires. Well, who could argue with that? They put my tractor in a pen with about 60 others, so I'm figuring it will be a while before I hear back.