CozyNet Blog

General update v28

Publish Date: 2026-07-12

It's been a moment, but I do have a few things that I've been up to worth blogging about.

I recently bought a lawn mower and a washer & dryer set. The lawn mower is a Husqvarna brand of riding lawn mower, which I've never heard of before. It has a hydrostatic transmission and a 46 inch mowing deck beneath it.

When I got it from Atwoods, it had a flat tire and needed a new battery. They replaced the battery in it, but the flat tire was still a problem. I bought a can of fix-a-flat which resolved it though. It wasn't exactly in brand new condition in my opinion, but it's not used either; it had just been sitting out for awhile and was neglected.

When I got it home, I was eager to mow the yard with it but had to wait until later in the week when I would be home. That Thursday night of the week I bought it, I mowed the back yard in roughly 30 minutes, which compared to my push mowing it had me beat by about an hour. I completed the front yard in the afternoon of the next day in about the same amount of time, which would usually take me an hour half to finish with the push mower. In total, it now takes me about an hour now to finish mowing the lawn instead of three, which was an all day ordeal between taking breaks.

Those last three and a quarter years of push mowing about an acre of land out in the Texas summer sun are finally behind me. Praise the lord!

Now I do still use the push mower for some harder to reach spots, and I also still have to do weed whacking, which ain't much fun either. Thankfully it's now the dog days of summer here, meaning the grass has stopped growing, so I'm inside more that I'm out. It'll pick back up when the season cools back down though, which I'm looking forward to instead of dreading.

The washer & dryer were considerably late to arrive. I ordered them late back in June from Home Depot's website, but it was a "delivery only" order which meant it was going to take time. Personally I prefer going to the store and just buying what I need from there or picking up as a delivery sent to the store, but the particular brand and model of washer & dryer I wanted wasn't something they kept in stock and was limited to online orders.

Pardon this dirty room. It still needs a lot of work back here...

I wanted the LG Washer (model: WT7150CW) and LG Dryer (model: DLE7150W) because they had a lot of good reviews; well at least the washer. I wanted the dryer because it matched and was sold with a discount when bought with the matching washer.

However, what I REALLY wanted was a Speedqueen washer and dryer since I hear a lot of good review about them. The only issues with them though is that you can only buy them new from a dealer and they're very expensive (or you could find them used, if you're lucky enough.) They don't seem to have much of an online presence and the only dealer that I could find in the whole state of Texas was around Dallas... No thanks, I'll just buy the LG washer and dryer and be happy with that.

Here's a video of me demonstrating it for some reason...

I probably used too much detergent. I come from a long history of powder detergent, so this is a first for me.

Yeah I understand that it's kind of mundane, but I was excited alright. Also, this is the first time I've ever washed and dried my clothes in my own machines (this is to say, machines that actually WORK and are located in a convenient spot. You have no idea...)

I'm really happy with the washer & dryer and was really needing my Saturday's back to get some projects done around the house, so being able to wash my laundry throughout the week and quickly mow the lawn are HUGE time savers!

I got another fun toy this week too. A fry daddy!

It was on sale at Walmart for like $25 and I've been wanting one since forever, or at least when I first started cooking. Lemme tell you, frying in a skillet is a dang chore! Some foods lend themselves better to frying in a skillet than others, but the fry daddy is really what you want.

Check out that spicy mustard fried chicken with the sweet potato mash and boiled okra right here, mmmhmm delicious! So long Jim's and Bush's, I can make my own now and it not take me all day standing at the stove. I can dip these leg quarters in for 12 minutes and they're done! My sweet potatoes were still boiling by the time I had my fried chicken done.

It was pretty good.

Here soon I'm going to make my own corn dogs to pack for work lunches too. I can hardly wait.

Alright, change of topic now...

I recently wrote a blog post on setting boundaries. Stemming from that, I was inspired to buy a journal book to write down the things I heard or felt during the day on spiritual matters or after a Sunday sermon, bible study or worship night.

It's nice to leaf back thru while recalling many of the things that can quickly dissipate for me. If you can relate, my attention span is about 30 seconds and then my mind will drift off with the subject to play out scenarios and events. I do pay attention, but my memory can be quite selective unless I have something to help it along. There could be a very important word or scripture in the moment that's being spoken and it get completely side railed by my noticing someones untied shoelace or a fly crawling on top of their head and it becomes all I can remember. When this happens, it's especially important that I write down what I just heard since it didn't have my complete attention.

I also try to summarize and reduce things to just their point so that later in review I can fill it back in as I recall. It's not 1-to-1 accurate, but it works.

Some people recall things by songs sung, peoples shared testimonies, or scripture, but I don't have a foundation in that stuff and wasn't raised in a context where it had a consistent place in my life. For example, some people can quote stuff out of the bible like I can quote South Park and Star Trek episodes! Ideally, I'd just crack open a laptop and type stuff into Obsidian notes or I'd record the meeting, but that wouldn't fly at all, especially in a place of worship. Fortunately I can recall by writing notes without much effort.

If you're a believer, then I'd like to suggest you try this out yourself because it's actually been really helpful for me to recall events and moments over the past few weeks as well as reveal a moving of the spirit that I haven't really noticed or paid much attention to. Like, I can see now in review since I keep stuff written down, a direction or a motion of things moving with an actual consistency that isn't just a bunch of randomness or strange occurrences.

And now another shift of topic!

I've been thinking about experimenting on writing more blog posts soon. One idea is a journal and the other is a book reading study.

Presently, I like to organize and plan out the things I post. There's no schedule, but there is a method to my madness. You wouldn't believe the amount of stuff I write that never sees the light of day. It's a little frustrating to feel the motivation to write something, but then by the end of it, what I wrote doesn't pass my mark of approval and gets trashed.

I've also found that I can write and not be distracted by my computer. I have nothing else to do on my computer really, but I like to write. Is that a computer distraction or not?

I would like to write more, but it's not always easy coming up with a subject that I feel like writing about or meeting a specific quality, so perhaps journaling could be an answer here. My concern with journaling though is that it seems divulging of unnecessary and mundane details of day to day life. I'll have to try and figure out how to summarize the events of the day down into just the interesting things instead of repeating myself. I also don't want to include the names of people or perhaps places either, and should anonymize them. I don't want this to turn into some mindless social media distraction either, so it needs to be intentional.

The book reading study could be really neat too, but I'm not exactly sure what I would write about. Maybe a summary of what I just read with some expounding? Not so sure about this one, but there are a few books I have in mind.

It's been an idea in the works and I'll might try to start on it here soon, then give it a month and see if it's something I want to keep doing.

Thanks for reading my blog!