I'm still too young to feel THIS darned old

Chiro today. He wants me to get someone to press their thumb along the back of my shoulder while I stretch my arm forward and across my body to break up an adhesion that has been bugging me. "When these things are not dealt with they often lead to rotator cuff tears" And the tendon for my biceps was out of its groove which is why I have felt weak as a kitten trying to do up the girth when I ride lately. He got that put back in but I am supposed to be careful with lifting over my head for a while.


I ordered a dream number bed today. I have been sleeping for a couple of years on a camping/temporary guest bed type air mattress with pillow top foam that I cut off my old foam waterbed replacement mattress before I threw it away. So I know I like the basic arrangement of air mattress with a little foam over it for warmth and cushion but the second camping mattress started leaking a couple weeks ago. I've been sleeping in the spare room and that mattress is disagreeing with me.

I had thought I would suck it up on the $$ and get a sleep number bed, I know the company has been around a long time so their 20 years warranty probably really means I could get warranty service for 20 years and people that have them usually like them long term.

BUT I just could not bring myself to take a day to go into a showroom; if they kept the beds on hand and I could have gone home with one I would have sucked it up but since its shipped from the factory later anyway...... It did look one could order online at sleep# now but their website was beyond awful. I got so annoyed trying to browse around it a little bit that I decided I'd take my chances with the knock-off company whose website was well done. If you have any friends with businesses do impress upon them that an awful website is a good way to lose some customers in this day and age.

I don't suppose it really hurts Sleep number a whole lot; I imagine a lot of people want to go in and test out the mattress and get tips from the salesperson etc etc when they are going to spend that kind of dough but it did cost them my potential sale.

Politics still sucks. There was ONE candidate that I thought was decent this year, but the stupid donors and early voters were scared to death that a Texas accent would bring back Bush derangement sympton + the late night comedians were poking fun at a couple of gaffes he made while being less than 100% recovering from back surgery. The remaining candidates all suck. Newt is a dis-organized mess, I really think Santorum is only so-con, not smaller government, more freedoms conservative -- much like Huckabee was. Romney is conservative only in the sense of supporting the military from what I can see. BLECH. I believe the nation, unlike the MarxSpewMedia, really wants to dump Barry, but with this crappy field it might not happen.

And I just don't feel like there is much energy to fight for congress this year either --although my state has no Senate race and my district got rid of a Dem last year and is OK with the R holding that seat so perhaps their is energy elsewhere but the web is just obsessed with the presidential race.

reason #8987 why it is so hard to balance the U.S. budget

Funding Opportunity Announced for ASR and RGCM
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is now accepting applications for Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) grants on topics related to the “Reduction of Tropical Cloud and Precipitation Biases in Global High Resolution Models”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The Department of Energy is in the climate science grants business alongside NOAA, NASA, and the smaller institutions funded by the NSF, oh and the DoD for sure and probably dept of Interior also fund climate study. Talk about runaway mission creep.

WHY is the department of energy piddling in climate research? Oh they have some justification based on AGW coming from CO2 (IOW based on that big fraud) but even if AGW from CO2 was not a fraud it is still a ridiculous amount of mission creep and multiple U.S. agencies handing out money to duplicate each others efforts.


Any money going to a department of energy should be directed to producing energy. Safer nuclear reactors using Strontium maybe. Clean coal technologies. Possibly Solar panel development is valid. But climate research? Its insane and there are probably several duplicated instruments separated by just a few miles funded by different agencies because of stupid crap like this.

Finally rode over the weekend

It had been over 2 weeks since I had any vitamin H and I was much in need. The footing was still a bit sloppy and saturday I had a bit of dizzy headache, possibly sinus so I opted to ride Shade rather than risk Sadie's little test my rider moves being made much more effective. Might have blown off riding altogether but Ole gave me the sad eyes. I'm glad he did, the fresh air made me feel better.

Sunday I rode Sadie, I was expecting a windy cold day on my monday holiday from the forecast so figured I better ride while I could even though I left it till fairly late in the afternoon and it was chilly. We only went down to the ditch, as I was chilled. I had not thought to dress more warmly than saturday. Good training ride for Sadie, we went my desired route at my desired pace.

I am still loving my new kindle. I read an Edgar Rice Burroughs sci-fi novel monday. I love downloading some of the old free stuff onto my kindle, its like browsing old stacks at a big library but with no worries about damaging a valuable old tome.

I am so blue

Cant decide where the hormones being out of whack ends vs just feeling blue because my nation is committing societal suicide and I don't know what to do about it. Need to get my act together. I do not need to be setting myself up for another sinus infection. I miss my phone buddy and somehow am not connecting on FB like I thought would happen.

I remember when I read Atlas Shrugged I was heartened in one way. Over 50 years ago Ayn Rand was writing about the same kinds of self defeatist crap and the nation snapped out of it. Just doesn't seem like there are enough rational thinkers today. I wish I had some talent for persuading people.

I do love the new kindle

Good thing because I am no longer enjoying most old forums and blogs. Thats often the problem with the internet, the people who post a lot usually have that much free time to post for a good reason. And I'm just generally cranky. Feeling like a Cassandra again, shades of fall 2008 (I was so dumb I didn't investigate Barry or McCain until that fall) Well I suppose it was even more doomy for folks that had watched the MFM effectively kneecap better GOP candidates in 2008.

Good lord Romney was probably the best pick of a bad lot out of the last 3 in 2008 and here he is again and again we could get a truly damaging candidate instead because Romney and the MFM focused on eliminating the strongest contenders first and now a base that is reluctant to have a NE liberal may overlook the huge glaring flaws in the last alternatives left. SIGH.

head desk

Arghhh. Overheard co-workers moaning that Republicans are not interested in passing a budget. DAMM idiots who cannot see even yet that the media are in bed with the Democrat party. I hope its just this stupid ivory tower liberal workplace and not a general viewpoint but I despair for the country. Russians seemed to be a lot smarter about realizing they were being fed BS propaganda.

Read my first novel on the kindle yesterday

I bought myself the 7th Terry Goodkind Sword of Truth book last week, started it Friday on my dinner break and read the bulk of it yesterday. It was a cold day, good excuse to just curl up with a book. I clicked on the reviews at Amazon to find out what was the 7th book in the series. I should write one myself, they need more reviews from conservatives. The "most helpful" review was decent but whining about the focus being on a new character. Its a weird criticism because Goodkind has introduced or focused a lot on a different major character in almost all of the books as I recall.

I had "kindle" on my christmas list and my sis got me a kindle touch. I suppose I will get more skilled at that but it added a tiny bit of frustration when I wanted to turn the page and it showed as me having highlighted a word and asked if I wanted the definition or couple other options. No, I know the definition of "they", "of" etc. --or went ahead 3-4 pages instead of one and I had to backtrack. Oh well it will be good practice for using the iphone for the weekend on call rotations. I hate typing out anything on that Iphone touch keyboard, its barely better than tapping the # keys multiple times to "type" out a text on my "dumb phone" cell phone. Sis wanted to step up from the very cheapest model, I had said that I did not want the "Fire" because it wouldn't have the e-ink, easy to read in various light levels and I did not think I would get any use out of a 3-G add on.

Friday I gave Shade her "monthly" dose of Adequan(tm). Its more like 4-6 weeks in the winter when I barely ride and 3 weeks when doing a lot of endurance miles and I figure she needs more help keeping her joints lubricated.

Trying to get in a fitness groove

I was this >< close to signing up for nutri-system, I was in a mode where thought I would enjoy just eating whatever they sent and not having to do any cooking.

--but I was looking at their web page going "oh premium plan includes SOME frozen entrees, the other is just shelf stable stuff" let me look at the sample 7 day menu. Well they want you to purchase stuff from the grocery and saute this and that to put on their pre-packed items. Hrmmph. I'll just stick with adding frozen veggies to the WW or lean cuisine entrees so I can eat at work with just a microwave available and have to use some will-power to skip helping myself to candy, cake, or cookies when co-workers bring in and not be snacking on junky food at home on the weekends. I have started having just making my supper meals with frozen pre-cooked meat and frozen veggies and I don't think I'm going to miss evening carbs that much. Had a good excuse to skip the group's celebratory pub lunch with the "I'm trying to lose weight" so some side benefits already.

Today I went for a short walk. I have to add in some exercise so I can still indulge in my dark chocolate, maybe just cut back a little bit. We are having January temps to start off February. I did take some advantage of the warm temps last month and do a bit of riding but it was low level. I knew the weather would probably turn and make me regret having been fairly lazy with riding but I still couldn't make myself be gung ho.

I should start taking my kindle to work so I can read some novels when I'm waiting on my food, and eating etc. The web browsing makes me too edgy lately. People who I know are not liberal put some slogany thing on FB that is just somewhat in the same vein as the liberal tropes and my blood pressure rises lately; let alone the ones that repost the actual propaganda bits. I used to think horse people tended to be more independent thinkers but there are an awful lot of sheeple.

On Komen foundation kerfuffle

Kerfuffle is such a cool word. I'm glad its been given new life via internet.

Susan G Komen foundation has been written about on blogs before this dust up with dropping grants to PP and then changing their mind.

So I had an apriori impression of SGK as being more worried about protecting "their brand" than fighting cancer, before the whole kerfuffle. Thus I have Zip, Zero, Nada sympathy for SGK with the Lefty shrieking blowback about cutting grants to Planned Parenthood because PP is under investigation for re-directing funds towards abortions.

I rather hope that all conservative types feel like they were baited and switched with the rapid reversal and decide to never ever donate to SGK again in any form; and all the liberals, that have "donated to" SGK via walks, bike or horseback rides, ribbon sales etc where the libs get the ego stroking and contribute some funds where they normally wouldn't part with any of their own money for charity, cuz they just expect government should pay for such things will also drop out because even with SGK quickly backing down the SGK image is no longer cool with their lefty crowd.

Maybe people will then donate those funds formerly given to SGK to groups that are more focused on actually defeating cancer in various forms than SGK ever seemed to be. Other outfits have walks, rides etc too so SGK is not the only game in town to "donate to" by paying an expensive entry or collecting sponsors to join a big group doing an activity you enjoy anyway for "the cause"

I'm probably more inclined than non red-heads to be a vindictive beeotch about things like this though.

Watching TV makes me despair that the marxists have already won the culture war.

Ambulance chaser lawyers routinely say " Hurt in an accident; WE will get you all the money you deserve." Not money you need, not money to compensate you for pain and suffering but money "YOU DESERVE" That's right being careless or just a victim of bad luck now means that you DESERVE a big pay out.

And then for one of the class action cases for lung cancer You may be entitled to a settlement share "even if you never smoked" WTF? "Even IF you never smoked?" So now you are certainly ENTITLED to a share of the tobacco company settlements, if you kept smoking for decades after they had to put warning labels on cigarette packs to inform you that smoking them would cause lung cancer. Does not compute in a sane world.

This crap that you cannot possibly be held responsible for your own actions, even with warnings of what would happen. That being a victim makes you some kind of hero, that everyone deserves a cushy life, so the government must provide that to people who cannot or who WILL NOT do so for themselves it is all insane.

I first noticed this victims are heros with 9-11 and of course who wants to be nasty and say that the people who didn't make it out of the towers are not heros --and the firefighters who ran in to try to save lives certainly ARE heros; but IMO it is just wrong to conflate a passive victim of violence or just of bad luck with the heros who actively put themselves on the line to try to save people from thugs or accidents. IMO the tens of thousands of people who took precautionary action and evacuated in time from the twin towers are everyday heros. The non-rescue personnel dead are victims and only victims. We mourn them, I am glad we took out taliban forces in Afghanistan to avenge them, but IMO it takes away from heroism to call innocent victims heros.

Hot potato, hot potato

Kind of seems like the GOP/RNC doesn't really want to win the WH, they probably know how boned the country is. But then Barry O manages to stir up new hatred and revulsion in me. I'm no biblical scholar, nor studied marxism and variations but I know that marxist policies of replacing family, community, church groups as support systems with government aid overseen by snooty bureaucrats all protecting their little fiefdoms of control is not something that comes from any true Christian belief; so Barry's remarks at the prayer breakfast are just one more reason he has to go, regardless of possible damage to conservative politics if the replacement is a NE liberal R. We'll just have to either go new party once the SCOAMT is gone, or continue the fight to take over the GOP from the folks that left the U.S. Democrat party to the marxists but lean towards genteel socialism.

I had intended to skip politics and just write about horse riding today. Sadie is showing her inner AYRAB more lately. Its cool, I like a bit of drama in my mounts as long as they don't seem completely crazy, but I am going to have to be thinking more when I ride her. Sunday I was letting her hurry a bit past a spot she thought was scary and she took it as tacit approval to bolt. I let her be for a few strides and then pulled her up with no problems but that is not something I want to happen again. I rode her yesterday and there was a huge crane excavator working about .7 miles to the north. Lots of snorts and I turned her around but then had to say "NO, we are turning around but not RUNNING away" But she did walk away; we stopped a few times and looked back to show her the 'monster' was not coming towards us.

Shade is cool, she feels pretty strong when I ride her, I have avoided having her out when any target practice or goose hunting was going on and she has settled down to her normal self. Still very much an AYRAB but a level that is mostly fun and not driving me crazy acting like the bogey man will get her at any second and sweating herself up over it.