7/2/18 First Official Vacation Day?

    I have been off since Thursday evening, but those days were just my regular time off since I work a twelve hour shift.  Tonight, I am starting the clock on using my vacation time.  Because I am counting this as my short week, I have to have 36 hours total for my hours to line up.  Since 4th of July is a holiday, we get 8 hours free there, I only have to burn 28 hours from my PTO (Personal Time Off).  That is not bad to have a week off to rest and reflect.  Not to mention, Wife only gets two weeks off in the summer and this is week one, so we get to spend all out time together.
    First thing I am noticing, since we have really cut out eating out is the high cost of meals when we get them outside the house, dam!  We had two meals on Saturday with just us two and Javalina and the lunch meal was $52 at Red Robbin and like $48 after a 25% coupon at Logan's.  The only reason I even agreed to the meals was that Wife got some $200 Visa gift cards from our cable provider a couple months ago that we were going to use on our vacation.  Since they expire sometime in August, I thought it better to just go ahead and use them.  Those two meals ate up about a hundred bucks and even worse, we went to Panera Bread Sunday afternoon to get Boy out of the house and that meal was like $53, and I would say fine, but Boy had a bowl of chicken noodle soup, I had a smallish sandwich of Turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, same with Wife, some small sandwich and Javalina did too.  They advertise food that is good and good for you, but wow, it is not what a fat man calls very filling.  After the 3rd doctor visit for Boy, we came home, I napped (I have been getting up before 7:00am to come to the table to write).  I woke up just as hungry after my nap as if I had not eaten anything at that dinky sandwich place.
    I am still curious as to how that new mower is going to perform.  The reviews say it is much quieter than a two stroke engine and not as smelly (this one is supposed to be a four stroke, but it has no manual or paperwork to verify anything.  It being a push mower with front wheel drive will also be helpful in the backyard where the yard has a bit of a slope down and away from the house as you get closer to the fence and greenbelt.
    This is after using the mower... The mower works pretty great.  It only took us about half an hour to cut the backyard.  That was with Wife pushing the new mower.  She got how to use it pretty quickly, I just had to explain to let the forward thrust go when walking in reverse.  Other than that, it was all good.