"My time management skills, let me show you them."

Yup, it's that time of the semester again. Yesterday, in addition to teaching all my classes, I:

Went out and collected the soil needed for the second run of the allelopathy experiment (this was from the field site some 20 minutes away - more now, because there's construction going on)
Verified I had the other necessary supplies.
Wrote part of an exam
Mowed my lawn

(I have to explain this a little...normally I use one of the little, old, reel-type lawnmowers. But in early spring, for a few weeks, the bedstraw is very bad and it doesn't really mow [it just packs down] with the reel mower, and then it pops back up again and looks really horrible. So in my quest to have at least not the worst lawn on the block, I decided what I really needed to do was mow it once with a gas-powered mulching-type mower, to get all the bedstraw knocked down.

But the question was, how to obtain such? I knew I didn't want to go out and buy one, even second-hand, because I didn't have anywhere good to store it [my garage is already too full] and one of the big reasons I opted for the reel-type mower was to avoid having to mess with gas and oil and spark plugs and all that. And even if I bought a mower and used it twice a year, I'd still have to deal with checking the oil, and making sure the motor was drained for the off-season, and so on and so forth.

I prefer that the tools I use not be more high-maintenance than I am. And I'm a pretty low-maintenance person.

So I thought - well, you could rent one. But. meh. The local rental places are kind of scary. [one thing you do not know about me - I am very apprehensive about going into a place I've never shopped before, unless I know the person behind the counter or unless I have a stronger "push" {like, it's a quilt-fabric shop} to want to go in there. So I'm really uncomfortable walking into places like rental shops and acting like I know what I'm doing].

The other day, when working in one of the outbuildings my department has [I was using a muffle furnace, which by virtue of the fact that it can achieve temperatures of 2000* F, is consigned to a building that would be less of a loss if it burned down], I noticed that there was a lawnmower.

One of my colleagues has a small, fenced-off experimental area, and he uses the mower to keep it trimmed.

So I asked him: if I filled the thing up with gas when I brought it back, could I borrow it? [rules about 'borrowing' equipment in academia tend to be strict; if something's been bought on a grant it's sometimes considered a violation of the grant to use it for an outside purpose]. He said that was fine, and even checked the oil on it for me.

So I loaded the beast in the back of my car, and drove home, took it out, mowed the lawn (front AND back, and the back really needed it; the mower kept stalling out the weeds were so tall). Cleaned it off [and I may mention to the guy that the next myrmidon he hires to mow, he needs to remind about cleaning the mower deck after several uses; there was probably a couple month's worth of chopped up grass-paste under the mower]. Took it back and put it away.)

I also did some grocery shopping.

Today, it's finish-writing-the-exams (yes, I have two to give next week) and set up the allelopathy experiment. (Hopefully both; the allelopathy experiment takes precedence but I'm guessing I can have that done by 3 pm if I start right after my single class today).

Which means - if all goes well - I have nothing I MUST do tomorrow afternoon. Which means I can probably clear the decks and participate in some volunteer work Saturday that I originally said I'd not be able to do.