Days like today I'm halfway rooting for DOGE to yank my orgs funding

 Nothing like trying to get shit done, even though I feel like the big boss is blocking me from merit raise or promotion, and getting radio silence when I make a request for something I need group action on on a Friday afternoon and its radio silence because everyone started their weekend early.    

 Of course I could risk my ego,  thinking "oh they'd fall apart if I just quit suddenly" and actually quit.  But I still like most of these people and don't want to put them in a bind.   My supervisor especially I feel would be at risk of a breakdown, she is already doing a bunch of extra stuff.   They wouldn't just fall apart, not right away,  some folks that are coasting a lotwould probably step up , some that are already working pretty hard would  work even harder and hope big boss got off his wimpy ass to fill the position quickly.  

My work are in panic mode again

 over a USA Today story.   Eye roll,   I'm pretty sure USA Today is near the front of the pack for publishing stories that are very nearly pure fiction as fear mongering or in some regions probably Yahoo inducing 'news'.   

But its quite possible that some Tornado belt university like Oklahoma may gain an advantage for bidding for the next 3 to 5 year grant proposal to manage weather research.    That would probably be the shove out of the nest to get me to sell this place and move to a much less blue state or else to NM to get a warmer winter.   I don't think I would sell and buy a place to commute to either OK university for the last few years before I hit retirement age, I would just retire early, maybe get a low level job, but I could probably just do YOLO and go around to different rides if I found a situation where the retired horses would have care while I was gone.   

But I really don't think we will be getting laid off in the next few weeks.   The stupid leadership thought that Barky and Biden policies would be permanent and went all in on idiot DEI that is anti-science and has zero relationship to our core mission; as well as pushing man-made climate change and shunning any researcher who didn't go along with herd on that and I didn't quit over those things, but it has made me lose any empathy if they do lose funding and folks have to either move to OK to stay in weather field or find private sector jobs. 

Toby will cross the rainbow bridge today

 I'm mostly numb about it right now.  Yesterday he was panting in pain, and didn't want to even take a tramadol (sp?) pain pill wrapped in cheese.   Normally I can give him 4 big capsules wrapped in some american sliced cheese and he gulps them down and thinks he got a nice treat.   I took just the small pain pill in a tiny bit of cheese and stuffed it in his mouth and he did swallow that.   I thought I was going to have to use Ruger to euthanize him, which I did not want to do, my mind goes to "what if my aim is not good enough and its not instant" but the pill kicked in and I called the mobile vet that euthanized Tux the cat for me last year.  She is coming this evening.     My housemate gave Toby some CBD oil and because I thought he was starting to pant again 5-6 hours after the tramadol I gave him 1/2 of a horse size bute tablet yesterday.   Toby has been moving slow the last week, but because he has such a history of teasing the horses and occasionally getting kicked or overdoing it chasing a rabbit and making himself sore I had not thought anything of it until he was panting in pain in the very early morning and didn't even want to swallow a cheese pill.    

With all the pain meds, Toby is still not wanting to move a lot but has wanted to eat, although not his normal kibble,  I gave him a small size can of cat food and a hamburger bun last night and he scarfed it up, and I also gave him some of his normal herbal capsules and his Benedryl in cheese.   I didn't want to give him too much cheese, but he got 3 slices instead of his normal 1/2 with capsules.    Why does it always feel like "do I have to follow through with euthanasia" when massive amounts of pain relief gets the critter feeling better.   He wanted more cat food and bread this morning so I gave him some.   I need to not punt and have the situation of the cancer? or whatever is going on getting so bad that pain meds won't help. 

 I need to dig the grave and have not wanted to start that.  But it will be dark today and I made a riding date for tomorrow so I need to gitRdone.   Part of me wants to cancel the riding, but I don't want to yank the rug on the gal I am riding with and Abe needs the miles. 

I rode Abe at home today

 I almost punted on riding at all but it was nice outside, over 50F with no wind.  It was a mental training ride not a physical conditioning ride but that is okay.  Mental training of Abe and I getting to trust each other with no buddy horse along.  He is already a good riding horse, but I need to get to know and trust him and he needs to get to trust me.    I am glad I bought him.   He and Tanza were play nipping at each other while drinking out of the water tank that crosses the fence between them today.   It made me smile. 

 

New screen door is installed

 The Handyman did not get it perfect.   He should have left a bit more trim or whatever on the bottom of the door.   Its closer is overly tight and when it banged the door shut if not held to slow it down it was coming past the frame and then hanging up a bit to open it.  I will have to screw a bit of something on the bottom of the door I think but my quickie redneck solution was to put a paper clip over the frame to have a bit more of something to block the door and, then put a dab of crazy glue to hold it in place when it worked; that is still holding and I haven't motivated myself to do a better fix yet.   

The guy did show up and dig a grave, would not let me even give him some gas money.   Paul came over later after the vet put Lady down and laid her to rest and filled in the hole with the tractor.   I should text their friends and ask what would be a good thank-you gift.  I wish folks would just accept some cash for favors like that; trying to come up with a gift is a PITA and sometimes I just don't get it done.

 P and S invited me and housemate for T-day.   I haven't said yay or nay yet.   I was thinking I might see if anyone wanted to go riding but there is a stinking EHV-1 outbreak.  The friends that board are being told not to take horses off property.   I canceled riding with one to ride Taj because she had recommended riding at the close by fairgrounds, and their arena is closed, have to park at sales barn, which I was not quite comfortable with any equine disease warning.  I would feel ok going to a trailhead, but am not too excited to go alone.  

So I should text S and ask "what can I bring, whipped cream?  fruit salad?, ginger ale or seven up for fruit punch?"  P relayed that "you don't have to bring anything"  S and P's mom are great cooks, so most anything I would bring would not be as good as what they'll cook, last year I brought fruit salad and it was not great.  I should have gone to a regular grocery earlier,  wallys was mostly out of the canned fruits I use when I went just 1 or 2 days before t-day and I had to use some old cans I had around to fill in the recipe and the wally's grapes were not not great either.   I don't want to not bring anything, I'll just stay home and chill or pout if I can't get a suggestion of something I can bring that they won't hesitate to eat.    Housemate has been working long hours at ToysRUs and I haven't asked her if she plans to spend T-day or another day that week with her daughter in CoSp,  the store she got the job at is opening today and has not had a clear schedule for them,  has needed way more man-hours to get the inventory unpacked from the pallets and displayed then the boss had anticipated when she was hired.  The extra hours is good for housemate,  stupid Animal Sanctuary that hired her in Aug, supposedly permanently let her go with no warning in October.   I have zero sympathy for the A.S. getting less donations this year,  they were living high on the hog when the Ds were shoveling federal money at any non profit that pushed any of the commie narratives, and bought up land rather than building up a reserve fund to make sure they could make ends meet if they had a couple of lean years.   

Well I guess the handyman is going to show up soon to install my new screen door

 I'm a bit annoyed,  I guess I failed to ask if he could install a screen door for me quickly when I contacted him three weeks ago.  He simply replied yes and did I have the door yet.  I hadn't bought one yet and bought one at Lowes that same day.   When I let him know that I now had a door then he replied he was out of town until Nov 1.     Had I known he was booked up for 3 weeks I would have tried to get someone else.   But its okay, the weather has stayed very mild all three weeks so it was no problem to just leave the big garage door open and go in and out the garage door instead of using the main entry.   

I did not know that P no longer had access to an excavator attachment for the other neighbors bobcat.  So P asked another friend of his do come and dig a grave for Lady.   I finally forced myself to stop kicking that can down the road and schedule the vet to euthanize her today.   Supposedly the guy who does have an excavator attachment was going to come this morning.  Well it is still morning for a couple of hours, but I'm wondering if he will show up at all.  At least he wasn't here at 7 am before I had horses moved.  But I don't know if I can dig a grave just with the tractor bucket if mini excavator guy does not make it.  If I had known the situation I probably would have just had the vet schedule the guy to haul the horse away.  

I finally had a lovely week long vacation

 The end of the trip went a bit south.   The clutch failed on sister's pickup.  So she had to get towed to Cheyenne and have it replaced, cost her about 4K.   I told her I had about 3K to give her from CO refund, prius sale, and sale of dad's pickup early in the trip and she was "no you keep it,  I owe you some for skid steer from years ago"    I pressed the 1500 I had in cash for the trailer on her after the clutch situation.   I figured she would probably just rip up a check if I wrote her one for the full amount.   

It has been hard to get back into work and taking care of the place now after having had the time off.  Does not help that work did a big reclassification of all the 'scientist' job titles and we got merit raises and I am the same level I was just with a new job description and my raise is just the midpoint raise.   In previous years the UCP director would stress that almost everybody is getting the midpoint raise, if the new director did that I missed that meeting.  The money is decent and its not like they gave me a lower raise for not hitting th e'meeting, and sometimes exceeding expectations' mark.  But I used work as the distraction from sucky life the last couple years and saved their bacon a few times from outages and it feels like our group director has ZERO appreciation.   

But I need to just take this as "here's your sign that you need to not shortchange home life, horse fun, etc. for those ingrates"  Well, mostly not ingrate(s),  just the director; but the rest of the group tell me thanks, etc. but that is as far as it goes.   They mostly feel overworked as well.   My supervisor and the sys admin ARE overworked.   Others, not so much.