Tough Tuesday

I wish it were Wednesday. I wish my day off was tomorrow. This week started out mildly not fun and is continuing down hill from there. I will try to keep my negativity to a minimum, but today was the worst day that I have had in a good long time. I'm not sure that I am ready to re-hash it all, so lets start with something that I enjoy. Frogs!!!
We have had a visitor move onto our front porch at home. He has been there at least a week. We will let him stay because he promises to be bug control when we have the porch light on. Our new tenant is a Gray Treefrog (I finally found my field guide!!!). The first photo was taken from inside last night. We can see his silhouette through the frosted glass window when the outside porch light is on. I went outside and got a photo as well. When I saw him hiding during the day, he was a pale gray color. At night, he looked almost green. These frogs do have some chameleon abilities and will change color slightly to fit the conditions.
OK, I guess its time to debrief on the rotten day I had. I got to work this morning determined to have a better day than yesterday. I got the paperwork taken care of right away and then got to work. I got out the leaf blower and spoke nicely to it and tried starting it. It still didn't happen. That is when I admitted that something was wrong. I removed the spark plug and it was pretty gummed up. I cleaned it up, but decided just to replace it. I cleaned the gunk out of the muffler screen while I was at it too. I needed to clear the walkway though so I got out our little back-up blower. On the walk to the walkway, I realized that I was VERY close to the hawk in the photo. It almost seemed to pose for me while I snapped a few photos. The settings on my camera were off though and I had to lighten the photos on the computer so unfortunately, the color is off a little. I blew off the walkway, but it took much longer with the little blower. There were more cigarette butts than frogs on the walkway today, summer has arrived. The little blower isn't strong enough to move the frogs, so they did not need to be relocated today, I just worked around them. When I finished, I had a few fishermen and a couple of divers in the park so I talked to all of them for a little while.
I headed back to the office and got the Gator loaded onto the trailer to take it to be repaired. I couldn't drive it onto the trailer because it is broken and I couldn't push it by myself. I had to get creative... I did it though! I stopped at the local auto parts store to pick up a new spark plug for the blower and then headed out of town. I had to drive about 30 miles to get to the John Deere dealership. On the way, it seemed like my truck was sluggish. I just blamed it on the fact that I haven't had to pull anything heavy in a while and that was why it felt different to me. After I dropped off the Gator and started to drive away, I realized that my first instinct was right. The check engine light came on and I was not able to drive above 45 mph the whole way back. It was even kind of scary when I had to go up hills, I wasn't sure the truck would make it. I was able to get back to the park though and when I go slow in the park, the truck seems fine. I will look into getting it repaired tomorrow.
I put the new spark plug on the blower and it still wouldn't start. At that point in the day, I figured that I just shouldn't push my luck. I put the blower away. I tied up loose ends at the park and headed to Adams Tract to get the blades off of the mower. I got it jacked up, but the bolts were too tight. I couldn't get them to budge. I will go back with reinforcements tomorrow. I am trying to tell myself that tomorrow will be better, but I don't want to get my hopes up. I have a park full of broken equipment and too much on my list to have only one day of work left this week. Tomorrow, I need to figure out how to get my truck fixed, drive to a town 25 miles away to get mower blades for two mowers, replace the mower blades on two mowers, drive 30 miles in a different direction to pick up the Gator if it is fixed. I don't think it is going to happen. Stay tuned... the saga continues tomorrow.