Living with Macgyver

Let me start this by saying that I’ve never seen the show. But who doesn’t know the cultural icon?

I call Michael “Macgyver” all of the time. Not really my most clever nickname (he has many), but it’s appropriate as he is really handy. Once when we were boating he fixed the engine with a fishhook. It was amazing. He bent it and attached engine parts and we were off.

Of course, there is a down side to living with Macgyver. He doesn’t understand the concept of too old, too run down or just plain broken. Oh, he’s a wee bit stubborn, too.

Last summer we bought a tiller from our neighbor at a yard sale. In its day, it was a really good tiller (circa 1940 in my mind). But for only a $50 investment, it seemed worth the gamble. It turns out the tiller was a bigger project than anticipated and he needed parts to make it go. Lucky for us (written with a smirk), we went to an outdoor auction and found the exact same model and we bought it for $5. Now $55 dollars in and countless Macgyver hours, we have one tiller that operated for about 45 minutes and one tiller carcass. In that magical 45 minutes, he tilled a swath of grass in the middle of the yard about 3 feet by 10 feet.

We’ve decided to rent a tiller as we had a good experience renting other power tools (stay tuned for an entry on the stump grinder). However, Michael’s already on to his next project. Who am I kidding? Projects… many, many projects.