Friday freakout

Last night and again this morning I was getting hughes net redirects on my laptop. Huh? I should still have funds at WF, could not get my site information --kept coming up with their default page instead I believe. Called this morn and got billing transferred to credit union. Then I stopped at WF to close my account since I have been waiting thinking that internet charge is all I have left on that account. Well I have a monthly paypal charge for something else. I switched to the cu for my paypal but this pre-existing charge is still coming out of the WF acct. Well I don't want to spend $12 a month in checking fees for that $25 monthly thing and an annual charge I have, I'll have to cancel those things and sign up for them again I guess. Why does it have to be so hard to manage these darn money tools? At least I still have plenty of funds at WF, the internet billing must have been failing because WF is giving me a new card. The old one should have been good thru today but whatever.

Yesterday Mia (the dog I thought was the good one) followed Ole into the next door neighbors yard while I was getting mounted and took after their daschund. Good news is Jake is ok, but now I have to put Mia on a leash and walk her past their yard if I'm taking her riding or else make her stay in the yard and close the gate if she is not coming. That will be fun. Mia is STUBBORN, usually not a problem because she doesn't wander off and pester neighbors, but she does think she should come out when I ride, even when she intends to just lie by the road harassing people who drive by, especially on ATVs till I come back. Ole has stayed now for 3 days. He whined about being in the yard this morning. I guess he thought he had earned parole after not slipping off yesterday when I forgot to yard or leash him. So when I grained I put the leash on him and let him out. I suppose I'll have to invest in a HOT charger and run some kind of electric around the fence line plus get me a good monitor that will show if its grounded out, so he can have the farmyard but I'm not going to rush to enrich his life. He is dads dog, not mine.

My skito pad came wednesday and I tried it yesterday. It worked forward too. Sigh I have to suck it up and try the hard pommel. What a DOH feeling. Why did I not at least try it with the zero labor option first?! Oh well, spilt milk and all that.

spinning too fast

Crappy title, too bad.

I rode in my new saddle today. It worked the saddle pad forward, gulp. I should have tried it with the hard pommel insert first. I'm really not wanting to take out my sewing to try the hard pommel and then decide I want the soft pommel. Next ride I'll try a fleece pad. I think it may be a good thing that the pommel apparently moves with the shoulder action if its not working the pad around tugging on Shades hair all the while -and if it does not come down on her withers -- But a minor eek feeling right now.

I am done with acting like Ole is partly my dog. He ran off AGAIN this morning while I was doing chores. I was so mortified when I saw him in the gals yard and then she apparently wasn't home, didn't respond to doorbell or knock so I just took Ole. Had to drag him through her driveway gate. So thats it. Ole will be staying in the house yard. No more getting to be roam the full farmyard when I'm outside doing chores. And I don't know if I'll give him any more exercise. Certainly no more coming when I ride because I'm busy riding and can't watch the dog like a hawk and I don't trust him not to slip off. I may take pity once his cut is healed and walk him or take him for a run with the car 1 or 2x a week, but no more with the horse. I feel guilty about it, which is foolish, I have restricted my riding for ages to accommodate him and previous dogs -- I should just enjoy my excuse to just ride now I finally have a really good one.

I called the electric company today. Haven't heard back. I've had a niggle that perhaps I'm in arrears with them, I was going to have them run power to my lot but changed my mind. There was a "deposit" that was not required before/when they came out and scouted the area and they have NOT billed me, but still its been niggling.

Tomorrow I must call the county, it feels like I should have gotten my tax bill but I have not seen one. I should have called today but me and phones, me and phones.

Dog overboard

What a mixed bag weekend. My new saddle came saturday Yay. I broke the zipper trying to put in the soft pommel, WAAH. I was unsure whether to try to send it back or just sew the pommel in. Crud I hate having to fix new things because a stinking manufacturer leaves the hard step to the consumer and/or uses flimsy components. Some back and forth with the dealer I bought the saddle from -I was believing that the soft pommel insert might just be too big and I would end up tearing the fabric sewing it. Well I have sore fingers but the pommels in there now.

And Ole got another cut on his butt last week -- I didn't see it when it was fresh, mom thought it was looking bad so she took him to the vets and they stitched it after keeping him for 1/2 the day. They sent him home with a plastic e-collar and a warning that he was going to feel dopey and sorry for himself for a while. He was a whiney baby the rest of the day, broke the e-collar in all of 3 hours, so I took him to PetSmart and bought the inflatable collar. Well I think it will actually stay in one piece, Ole feels better today. I took Ole for a walk today, and then made him stay home while I rode Shade, in the old LJ. Oh well I stayed on except for my voluntary dismount to lead her past the 'scary' barrel she was acting goofy about.

My super siphon hose worked well. The first bit flowed pretty fast, then it slowed down but it got my p/u bed tank almost completely drained. I flipped my tank around but I'm going to have to take off a bracket thats on it so it will fit up snug against the front of my p/u box. So didn't make a diesel run. I hadn't left enough time to mess with a hack saw. Not sure there isn't an easier way.

rode today, but only 3 miles

Thats not too bad --Shade had the dreaded white snot on her nose this morning. LOL, drama queen sentence there. I always used to just shrug off a little white snot in the spring. But after she got sick and then was allergic last year until I took her off alfalfa I'm a bit paranoid. But she felt strong, definitely not the huffing effect she had last year with the severe allergies after being sick.

I am floundering at work this week. I've done a lot of busy work, cleaning disks and pushing data to archives and so on. Needs to be done but I need to update plots for the paper I have to write.

I let Ole come when I road and let him out when I fed --put a leash on him. That seems to help him remember to stay in the yard. But he went out in the diet paddock and looked longingly in the direction of the neighbor he's been annoying. Tomorrow he may get a taste of just getting let into the house yard, I did not think of it today. I'm debating buying some grazier fencing --electrified mesh to put around the paddocks. Wish the damm dog would just stay. He knows he should, and he has the horse fencing to remind him of the boundaries, but he just cant be bothered to control his impulses much of the time. Like too many spoiled people but I don't want to go THERE tonight.

becoming meat and potatoes

Well I've always liked a good steak etc. I just don't plan ahead to cook it very often, and I've not been much of a potato eater in years. But last weekend wondering what to eat since mom was too sick to cook I used up some old lean sauage and I made fried potatoes and onions to go with it. Then I bought a lb of ground bison so I could combine with the old tube of pork sausage in the freezer for meatloaf this weekend. Cooked it up tonight, found a recipe for mushroom meatloaf on the web that sounded close to moms version. I skipped the sauted mushrooms and added extra onion, but oatmeal instead of bread crumbs, and cream of mushroom soup sounded right. Mom always just used hamburger but the recipe I found called for 1/4 ground pork, so with having the lean bison its close. And I fried up potatos and onions again for the side.

I've always been somewhat conservative, but turning more so this past year too. I feel like I'm turning into a hybrid of my grandfathers, they were both meat and potato eaters.

I felt like allergies or a head cold was taking a swipe at me this weekend and didn't do much. Saturday I bought a 100 gal tank and put about 38 gallons of fuel in it on the way home. Wish I had not because I've decided I want to flip the tank around and just use the fill cap and a siphon hose after pricing transfer pumps. The tank has a hose but no pump and the seller put the hose end towards my trucks fill cap. Well I have an empty barrel I can siphon into, just have to wait for the siphon hose I bought online to arrive. Someone came up with the cood idea to put a 1-way valve on the end of a hose. So you can just shake the hose to get the liquid displacing air and start siphoning. Even if that does not work out having the 1-way valve will make it much easier to start the siphon process with lung power.

Sunday I took a short ride, went west and took Mia for a romp. Today I rode east and changed the routine a bit. I wanted to go farther but Ole was along but really lagging so I turned back quicker, Only went about 5.5 miles altogether and Ole went way less. Not sure if he's a bit sick, or just wore himself out running around when he should have been home in our yard, Darn dog, mom tried to lay guilt trip on me but I pointed out that I wanted to put dog tight fence up 2 years ago but couldn't get any help. If she is suddenly bothered by the dog being a pest she can hire some fencing done now. I cannot keep track of whether the dog sneaks off or goes in the house when I'm in and out feeding.

Praise the saints I rode yesterday

Well I never say praise the saints. I'm not Irish, more of a skitzo Lutheran (split between dark and sunny) If you didn't grow up in ND or MN that reference probably makes no sense but Keillor had a funny skit on it once on his Prairie home companion radio show.

BUT. I did ride Shade yesterday. I didn't take advantage of decent weather M-W but at least I got one brief ride in for my sanity. I need all help I can get. I should stop following any national political news I suppose. I cannot make my congress critters see any sense and it makes it hard to focus on work. Oh well the porkulus has passed. Perhaps this is the final push I need to invest in my WY land now. I cant see how inflation can fail to follow in a few years. No sense waiting till my savings will only buy 2/3rd as much. I wanted to buy a used laptop today but communications failed with the seller. We were supposed to meet at the credit union. I was 3-5 minutes late ---hey being late is presidential now :P As I was pulling in a blue jeep was pulling out, possibly the seller. Oh well if he was unwilling to spend an extra 10 minutes I guess he didn't really want to make the transaction; and he may have flaked out altogether and the seemingly huffy jeep driver was listening to bad news about the porkulus or something. There are similar laptops advertised on CL every week so no big thing. I hope I'm able to get the fuel tank I called on this morning. Supposed to meet that person tomorrow in Denver.

Hopefully I'll get 2 rides on my 3-day weekend. I should aim higher but 2 rides is passable.

Not a bad weekend

Yes, I know SUCH enthusiasm. Chalk it up to feeling like a cold virus is trying to get started. I've been able to ward them off so far this winter but I didn't get a flu shot. I think my subconscious resists. I usually think I'll get one since I hate being really sick, weak as a newborn kitten. Been lucky the last few years and haven't had anything more than a cold. I do help lady luck along by taking zinc at first signs of something and also a ginger/horseradish/garlic/onion/hotpepper vinegar concoction that was posted on a BB board I frequent. Both are nasty enough to ward off any tendency to take them too much. I especially dislike the zinc aftertaste.

I had a nice ride on Shade on saturday. Didn't go very far but she was feeling good, she volunteered lots of cantering.

Sunday dawned dry and above freezing instead of snowing so I cleaned Duke and AJ's pens and opened gates and let Duke wander in all 3 pens with AJ. He seemed to enjoy the change of scenery and cleaned up some hay AJ had left. Duke leaves stalky grass himself now (he used to be a total hoover) but if its AJ's scraps its better I guess. I also let the 6 big horses in the front pens roam both paddocks for a few hours. I did not get to the mini's pens and I don't care.

Dad helped me unload my diesel on saturday so now I should get more. Its actually even a dime or so cheaper now than it was, but I cant imagine the price will not go up this summer, or at latest next summer if the recession deepens. B is doing his best to deepen the recession but I think he wants high fuel to encourage his green agenda and help out his buddy countries.

ride and rant again

I rode beautiful again today. My latest nickname for Shade, When I'm feeding in the mornings and she's looking so pretty "Hi beautiful" pops out of my mouth. Since it was crazy warm I went west and let Mia have a good ramble. She doesn't come at all when I head east as there are burrs even on the 'roads' after the first 1/3 mile going that way. I figured since it was so hot I could live with Shade having to ogle all the 'scary' crap that gets dumped on road 33. A non maintained country road along the utility lines and popular dumping area for uncivic jerks. I did get some trotting away from home, and asked her to walk past the big tractor tire which is newly dumped. She got some cake for going up close to the tractor. Then we did quite of bit of good trotting towards home, with one silly big spook at some plastic flapping on a fence --fairly common site around here. And she did a sprint when the QH's in the big adjoining pasture took off running. The S-hack brakes do work - I made her slow down where we crossed the graveled turnoff for a natural gas pipeline. So that was some fun. Then after filling water tanks I was running late for a meeting. It was good, I missed the conference call which is a time suck and has little information for me (and I have no information for the NWM person in MD either).



Rant of the day --stumbled on this following information on the faux stimulus (really communist take over) bill in the blogosphere.


***I wonder how many are from after BHO was elected, then sworn in and started Really showing his true stripes? especially the disdain for the folks who have been putting their lives on the line for this country? ********

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- One week after the U.S. Army announced record suicide rates among its soldiers last year, the service is worried about a spike in possible suicides in the new year.

If reports of suicides are confirmed, more soldiers will have taken their lives in January than died in combat.

The Army said 24 soldiers are believed to have committed suicide in January alone -- six times as many as killed themselves in January 2008, according to statistics released Thursday.

The Army said it already has confirmed seven suicides, with 17 additional cases pending that it believes investigators will confirm as suicides for January.

If those prove true, more soldiers will have killed themselves than died in combat last month. According to Pentagon statistics, there were 16 U.S. combat deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq in January.

"This is terrifying," an Army official said. "We do not know what is going on."

Col. Kathy Platoni, chief clinical psychologist for the Army Reserve and National Guard, said that the long, cold months of winter could be a major contributor to the January spike.

"There is more hopelessness and helplessness because everything is so dreary and cold," she said.

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But Platoni said she sees the multiple deployments, stigma associated with seeking treatment and the excessive use of anti-depressants as ongoing concerns for mental-health professionals who work with soldiers.

Those who are seeking mental-health care often have their treatment disrupted by deployments. Deployed soldiers also have to deal with the stress of separations from families.

"When people are apart you have infidelity, financial problems, substance abuse and child behavioral problems," Platoni said. "The more deployments, the more it is exacerbated."

Platoni also said that while the military has made a lot of headway in training leaders on how to deal with soldiers who may be suffering from depression or post-traumatic stress disorder, "there is still a huge problem with leadership who shame them when they seek treatment."

The anti-depressants prescribed to soldiers can have side effects that include suicidal thoughts. Those side effects reportedly are more common in people 18 to 24.

Concern about last month's suicide rate was so high, Congress and the Army leadership were briefed. In addition, the Army took the rare step of releasing data for the month rather than waiting to issue it as part of annual statistics at the end of the year.

In January 2008, the Army recorded two confirmed cases of suicides and two other cases it was investigating.

Last week, in releasing the report that showed a record number of suicides in 2008, the Army said it soon will conduct servicewide training to help identify soldiers at risk of suicide.

The program, which will run February 15 through March 15, will include training to recognize behaviors that may lead to suicide and instruction on how to intervene. The Army will follow the training with another teaching program, from March 15 to June 15, focused on suicide prevention at all unit levels.

The 2008 numbers were the highest annual level of suicides among soldiers since the Pentagon began tracking the rate 28 years ago. The Army said 128 soldiers were confirmed to have committed suicide in 2008, and an additional 15 were suspected of having killed themselves. The statistics cover active-duty soldiers and activated National Guard and reserves.

The Army's confirmed rate of suicides in 2008 was 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers. The nation's suicide rate was 19.5 per 100,000 people in 2005, the most recent figure available, Army officials said last month.

Suicides for Marines were also up in 2008. There were 41 in 2008, up from 33 in 2007 and 25 in 2006, according to a Marines report.

In addition to the new training, the service has a program called Battlemind, intended to prepare soldiers and their families to cope with the stresses of war before, during and after deployment. It also is intended to help detect mental-health issues before and after deployments.

The Army and the National Institute of Mental Health signed an agreement in October to conduct research to identify factors affecting the mental and behavioral health of soldiers and to share strategies to lower the suicide rate. The five-year study will examine active-duty, National Guard and reserve soldiers and their families. E-mail to a friend | Mixx it | Share

Thank goodness I got my sanity ride this morning

I was moving slow this morning, yes again. But no meetings at work and nice weather so I rode Shade. We only went about 4 miles but it was fun.

I don't know that its a good thing but I am becoming resigned to the fact that we are going to become France squared in terms of socialist/communist big brother government. The world will not end, there are business starts in France and horse people can ride there. --I do still think its going to be a bumpy ride --and its not the right thing for our country.

It is a bit unsettling that Iran, (you know the working to develop a nuclear weapon Islamofacist country) launched a satellite today. Suggests that they are working even harder to be able to put their nuclear bomb where they want.

Have to wrap up my journaling -and stop informing myself of all the bad news and buckle down on some processing stuff, but leaving with this:

OK just reading the titles tells you some of the problem with any of the stimulus bills:

Official from thomas.loc.gov for S336 (senate version of the stimulus bill)

TITLE(S): (italics indicate a title for a portion of a bill)
SHORT TITLE(S) AS INTRODUCED:
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act
HITECH Act


Here's the Titles for HR1 (house version of the 'stimulus' bill)
SHORT TITLE(S) AS PASSED HOUSE:
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act of 2009
Assistance for Unemployed Workers and Struggling Families Act
Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act
Health Insurance Assistance for the Unemployed Act of 2009
HITECH Act
Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2009

****Well I Know WHY they have all that extra crap in with the stimulus bill, --its easier to get junk through when its attached to a bill that is seen as 'urgent'. But there ought to be a law that congress cannot pass any new law which is not read aloud in its entirety before being voted on. Maybe they would have to work 4 days a week instead of 3, poor things. But maybe they would also stop choking this country with stupid regulations and new programs that will have to be funded indefinitely -- like that old adage about there are few things more permanent than a temporary government program/subsidy.

Playing dress up with Sadie

She doesn't look bad in grown horse attire eh? And my sweet boy Grey Moun, and moms minis. And I got all the little pens fairly clean and raked the buildup from the feeder in Shade and Sadies pen. Which is the 3 ayrabs pen now. Grey has been losing weight, has gone from being plenty fat to as lean as I want him to get. So he's in with my bay girls getting a little bit richer hay in the same volumes or a bit more as the diet pen gets. Cindy is older but she's still in good weight. My easy keeper old mare. CJ got extra food for 2 weeks when the tractor was in the paddock. He's been doing pretty well anyways I think.