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West Texas Intermediate Spot Prices (Sorce: US Energy Information Administration)

At the risk of sounding a bit like Cliff Claven, everyone's favorite know-it-all postal worker from the 1980s TV series, Cheers, please allow me to introduce you to the one and only unretouched by Photoshop V potato. Despite Carla's claims on the show, it looks nothing like Richard Nixon, but it does look like a boomerang! Yet it is not Australian - I dug it up from my own garden here in Colorado. There must be some hidden meaning behind it. Perhaps, a foreboding of some victory somewhere. I must treat it with utmost respect and give it the glory it deserves...

My darling little daughter somehow messed up the dishwasher - pressing all the wrong buttons at all the right times and it went into a fault state - flashing "clean" light. The manual only says to call service. Well, a service call is not cheap, they only come out this way once a week and that means having to do dishes by hand for at least two weeks - forget that! Not to mention that the last time they came out a couple of years ago for this same problem, all they did was push a couple of buttons. Now, which buttons were those, again?!

Just in time for our first snow today, I picked up my very first tractor today. It's about 5 years old - a Sears Craftsman DLT 3000 lawn tractor (Model No. 917.273471) with a 20HP Kohler twin V 20HP engine and a 42" cutting deck. It came with a bumper, tarp cover, an aerator and a cart. (No snow plow or snow blower, of course.) Cosmetically it looks perfect and the guy who owned it before me, appears to have taken great care of it mechanically, as well. I paid $560 and the fellow was nice enough to bring it up to my place from Parker. (Thanks craigslist!)