Sometimes Life Can Be a Pain and random thoughts

Saturday, a great day to get some outdoor work done. Let's see....I've been meaning to dig up an area for a small addition to the garden space. So down to the shed to get out the tiller. Oh, rats, the tiller has a flat tire... a REALLY flat tire. No problem, I'll just start it up, run it to the garage and attach it to the compressor.
But before I start it, I remember from past experience that the mice seem to like nesting inside the engine cowling, so I'll pull the starter rope very slowly to chase them out first. And as I pull it, sure enough there are mice running everywhere. Then a real pull to start it and the engine simply stops turning. It just stops, no matter how hard I pull the cord. Crimminy, now what? I can't push the tiller to the garage (it's all uphill and the flat tire now has unseated from the rim), so I go to the garage and get the necessary tools, then back to the tiller to start disassembling the cowling and starter cord assembly. Of course, the machine is built in such a way that to remove the cowling, I have to remove the gas tank, the bracket that holds the tank, and about every other part of the motor. Finally, I lift off the cowling and another swarm of mice run out, and leave behind a mouse house that would make the Trump Towers look small. Clean out the nest, reassemble the cowling but leave it loose so I can run the tiller up to the garage and blow the remaining debris out of the cooling fins. Now this motor ALWAYS starts on the second or third pull. So about a dozen pulls later, I decide that there is a problem. I still can't push it up to the garage, so maybe I can pull it there.
Get out the tractor and hitch it to the tiller. Start pulling and the flat tire immediately rolls off the rim and the tiller tips and veers off course. Reattach and try again....same result. My long-suffering wife, bless her heart, comes out and while I drive, she horses the tiller back in line until we get it to the garage. Disassemble the cowling, blow out the cooling fins, reasssemble the cowling, gas tank bracket and tank, tighten everything back up. One pull on the cord and glory be, it starts!!!. Then try blowing up the tire.....it won't seat on the bead to hold any air. Find a piece of rope, wrap the tire and cinch it down, then try inflating.....no go. Where is my bottle of SLIME.....slime the bead and rim, retighten the rope and reinflate, and IT HOLDS. Seat the bead, remove the rope, and we are ready to go. So, a job of about 20 minutes, tilling the garden, ends up being a 11/2 hour job of virtually rebuilding the tiller.
There is a law, whose name I cannot remember, which law is surprisingly accurate when it comes to home repair jobs. It states that one makes the best estimate of the time needed for a job. That time is then doubled, and the time scale moved up by one unit, and the result is the actual time needed. Thus if the best time estimate is 2 hours, then double it to 4 hours and go up one unit to 4 days, and that will be the actual time needed.

And random thoughts:

How can Pres Obama stand in front of us with a straight face and talk about how deficit spending cannot go on, while he has singlehandedly increased deficit spending more than any other president in history?

As a Catholic, I hang my head in shame over what Notre Dame University did this past weekend. Against the beliefs of the Catholic faith, against the rules put out by the bishops, against the voices of thousands who called and wrote their opposition, the president of the university gave an honorary degree to a man who has consistently voted in favor of abortions on demand, and consistently voted to allow the killing of infants who survived an attempted abortion.

And a very cool visual illusion here.

If I can clear my head and try to make some sense of all that is being done to our country, I'll try to pick up where I was. Right now, I'm whelmed by all that has happened