Short rides are better than no rides

I really should have hauled Shade out for a serious training ride over the weekend.  Instead I did about 9 miles out of the yard and did some boring repetition to get a few passes at the hill on sunday, much better than nothing but unless I get a spectacular training ride in this weekend I will have to just ride the 25 on the Aug 11-12 ride.  I'm so unfit this summer that I don't know if I could handle a long day riding a slow 50, I think I'll just have to trust that I will get to either the Labor day weekend ride or local ride end of Sept or both to get in at least one 50 for the year which has become my only serious goal.

   L was out on saturday, home from Europe and I grabbed Sadie to join her and Lady.  Sadie was good,  didn't lose her mind with a bit of cantering, Lady going off in front in a hurry near home etc.   I think we are pretty well past the angst from the saddle turning incident.   I rode Sadie again this morning and she was pretty good.   She got a little antsy with someone doing some roofing.  BTDT with Shade so even though the house being roofed was way off to the side, I cut Sadie some slack, got off and led her by the activity so I would not get nervous that she might get into the downed fence on the other side during a startle.  

Getting rain here at work.  Its too bad God can't just cut these spoiled whiny marxist yuppies out from rain and send it to the farmers; but the city is right off the foothills where rain tends to fall more. 

Shade's still the one

Every time I hear that song I think of her.   I love every horse I own and they tend to be my favorites while they are the horse I'm using the most at the time.  I think Sadie will fill that slot in the future but I sure like my older bayrab mare now.    I took her for a quick spin this morning and it was just fun fun fun.   Life is good when I can get some time on the back of a horse :)

Finally rode Sadie again

Felt like I hadn't ridden in a week, but I did take a short ride on Sadie on saturday.   I skipped on sunday because I was moving a little hay and the heat or something got to me suddenly.  I won't ride a greenie when I feel a bit dizzy and lightheaded.  Shade was getting a break since I was worried she might be getting pigeon fever.   I don't think she had it, perhaps a bit of something from scratching/bruising herself on the chest,  seems to be clearing up with AB's. 

  Knock wood that things are cleared up, that would be just perfect.  I have  to skip the ride that just always feels a wee bit off to me wrt to how they run it because of the zero drugs rule but if there is no pigeon fever I should be able to go to the ride in WY in mid august and the one I'm thinking of going to labor day weekend.    I must contact the lesson person,  let her know I was in a wait and see game with the pigeon fever and see if I can get a lesson scheduled with Sadie now.

At least we will have our hay now

We had to get 1/2 a stack of hay manually, went over saturday.   Grower helped load and I was practically redundant.   I only decided on saturday afternoon that I wanted to stack it near the mini's since its mostly crested wheat which I think is less rich so safer for them.  Cleaned out the area Sunday and dad and I stacked the 70 bales today.   Only took about 30 minutes,  I said "lets only go 4 bales high since we have plenty of space and I was able to get the top 2 bales on the last 2 pallets from the trailer so dad could just shove them into place.   No sense wearing ourselves out even though it was not hot yet.   OK 2 or 3 mornings to get the space in the big shed ready for the hay we will have delivered by the hay hauler with a stack mover ---wanted to move some hay stacked along a wall just to make sure he has space + remove loose hay from the floor of the shed because I think its counter productive for keeping the hay nice.  

So then I recover for a bit, go out and give the horses their grain.  That feels like a project lately with giving Sadie Platinum supps for her skin (Platinum is an apt name $$ stuff)  + giving Shade her antibiotics, as well as feeding the rest of the critters their stuff in their pens.   Plus I went around and topped off all my fly bait stations with water and a bit more of the insecticide granules.   Got all that done,  showered and dressed for work, dad is off to town for a couple quick errands and the hay hauler calls and wants to deliver in 2 hours.   I probably should have said "no we cant do that" but its not my nature to refuse a request like that just because its not convenient for me versus if it was really not possible to have the space ready in a couple of hours.


So I move some of the bales, leaving 10 right at the back corner because I figured they wouldn't be in the way and the hauler had said he could move a few bales if he couldn't get the stack in.   Dad gets home and comes out to move hay.   He tackles the 10 bales I have left getting them down to just one lengthwise base along the wall like I have stacked most of the other hay cuz I knew that left plenty of space for the experienced hauler to get his stack in and I pick up 3 carts of loose hay.   I don't think I have all the loose hay removed for 3 stacks to be set in there but I was getting hot and tired and decided it was not a necessity to remove more.   If the hauler thinks the last haystack wont set level and steady enough  he'll have to ask dad to take out a little more loose stuff between loads. 

Now I'm at work and finally starting to feel like I can stay awake and maybe even focus enough to do some mental tasks.   Its good to do some manual labor stuff once in a while to be reminded why its nice to have machines and be able to hire some things done.   Gee too bad there is not way to make leftists, especially the guilty liberal types, experience this, maybe they would stop whining about CO2 meaning we --but you proles first -- have to give up affordable energy and all the cool labor savings and nice things it gives us.  This is after they managed to spike nuclear energy with "we humans are not smart enough to manage this safely, we'll kill off our kids 11!!" 

Another round of "How hot and dry is it"

Its been so hot that I leave the house exhaust fan running all night because it about takes the breeze to feel like sleeping temps.

Its been so hot/dry that even the rabbits are looking skinny and heat stressed.  I could probably kill or drive off the ones that hang around our yard if I set up a bird bath on a pedestal rather than just having water in shallow dishes on the ground to try to limit the # of drowned birds in the horse troughs.   But even though I think rabbits are mostly fuzzy tailed rodents I don't feel like they are hurting anything right now.

Its been so dry that it felt like taking a big luxury to pull my mats and wash out my horse trailer interior but it was overdue.

Its been so hot and sunny that petting Mojo or Diamond (our black mini's) when they have been standing in the sun is uncomfortably hot for my hand.  

Its been so hot and dry that hay prices are crazy and folks that usually get by on pasture don't have it so a round of horses that survived 3.5 years of Obaconomy with original owner are being sold off or given away.  :(   I saw a heart tugger ad on CL.  I shouldn't click on the cheap horse ones.  I wont be able to care for mine like I want if I try to rescue others, but gosh the underweight ones get to me.  I could (money and space wise) get weight back on 1 or 2 of them but I'm such a softie I don't trust myself not to hang on to them instead of letting them go to anyone that would take them and time wise especially the care for my own lifetime horses would suffer.    Maybe I'll donate to my rescue internet friend again instead to make myself feel better.

Barry Derangement Syndrome?

Terrible mass murder event in Aurora with the deranged ex neuroscience student shooting up the mover theater.   And my first reaction before I learned he had been in a med or pre-med program.   Eff you Barry for canceling your campaign stops today for healing ---there is zero evidence yet that the shooting had anything to with politics so why are you dragging in politics by changing your plans and making a speech about 'unity.'    My second reaction when I learned that he left or is in process of leaving his degree program about a month ago is "oh please don't let him have done this evil because he'd expected the SCOTUS to bail us out from the AHCA/Barrycare crapola and felt utterly betrayed when they did not.

I dislike having those reactions.  I think to myself "#1is the kind of super charged negative prism the Bush derangement folks applied to every last thing he did and I hate being like them"   Well I am not like them too much since I go introspective about my reactions and they always tried to use volume to convince the world that Bush really did have bad motives for everything he did.

And #2 reaction presumes that everyone who opposes BarryCare and felt stung by the SCOTUS decision has some share of guilt in Mr Holmes' actions if that was his motivation.   Umm no, regardless of why he did this, he is responsible for choosing to murder those people, hiding in the dark and behind a costume like a craven coward while he did so.

Well thats a good nudge

The self-proclaimed software guru put a statement about coaching me to write code in the company style, getting tips from him.   That slimy weasel is a drag on getting anything done, always promises aid to do something in front of bosses and then ducks out and is a general pedantic PITA.   I am not happy to have him bumping up his importance (coach, mentor) RETCH on my back.  Fact of the matter is that code I've written for that group has been in that framework with a few things that I felt were just outside stuff that I didn't bother wrapping up in all his extra layers.    I so need to bail out of this asylum.

OK,  found some workable language for my employee comments.  I will take THE valuable suggestions.  I was PC and did not underline or capitalize the, nor add any snark about discarding the crap.   I still need to force myself to pursue options for bailing, hard to think about leaving a steady job when hay is over $300 a ton, but I have got to protect my emotional health. 

losing my grip ... if I'd ever had it

I need to get my passport application finished up.  --figure out whether the pay the expedite extortion fee, and also on the shipping.   Overnight shipping is extreme overkill for 12 weeks but I kind of wonder if I should do it anyway just to make sure the application actually gets to an 'expedite this desk'.     Stopped on the way to work to get gas and my wallet was not in my purse.  I thought maybe I left it at the office but it was not here so I sure hope its sitting somewhere at home.   I have my cash reserve and can get gas but I didn't really need it yet so I just aborted at the gas station.

Yesterday I thought that I had found that I had an error in processing for over a year after the reference frame model was updated and got a new name.   Today I found that it was OK after re-running a couple of days and finding the #'s were not changing.   Except that this means that my method to make sure I am consistent with the reference frame of the orbits and etc. is not super great and I may have to improve it.   I'm hoping just adding another reference station to my new processing and tightening my constraints just a bit will be enough to nudge things into place.  

I rode Sadie again today and rode Shade yesterday.   First time I have ridden 5 days in a row in I don't know how long, which is pretty pitiful given the goals I had in mind for the 2 mares this year.  I have got to stop getting sucked away from riding by worrying about things that are outside of my control.  The tuesday and today rides were both OK not great.   Oh well I should be reasonably pleased to have some consecutive OK rides on Sadie after our early summer start with saddle turning and crupper woes followed by the skin allergy and her possibly anxiety reaction to the Benedryl + my general freakout that she was never going to trust me again. 

I may have found a way to repel grasshoppers from chewing stuff up.  I am not thrilled because I had hoped that it was a method to kill them off and its kind of time intensive.   Consists of collecting grasshoppers and grinding them up in the blender with water.   Then strain into a spray bottle.   I had read decades ago in some Organic Gardening magazine that this method kills some pest or other (not locusts.)   Its supposed to release and concentrate some natural bacteria  like Thurgicide or whatever that kills the bugs.    I wish I could borrow some chickens or 'ginny' fowl for a couple of weeks but I sure don't want to set up to raise them.

Lazy wild birds and snakes need to step up their eating.   That is why I wanted to try the bug juice method, its safe for whatever might eat the sickened grasshoppers.   Mom had some natural bait, but when I was researching on the web trying to determine if the bug juice method had been proven/disproven for grasshoppers I found some article that said that the 'Nolo' bait only inhibits the grasshoppers from breeding.   Well when we are surrounded by the things just inhibiting breeding of the ones that wandered into the garden  wasn't going to make much of a dent and it sure did not. 

Mom has pneumonia.  I am not surprised, she had a nasty cough for a couple days before she saw the Dr.   I feel bad, but my chief internal reaction is "well, rather expected since she has been laying around so much"  I know she had sinus/jaw pain and a pulled hip muscle or something but I just feel like the human body doesn't do well spending too much time prone, and with her immune issues from the long term antibiotics use trying to kill jaw infection/pain before giving up and having implants removed ........   But, I can't talk to her about stuff like that,  I know she'd just take it as nagging and being totally unsympathetic to her plight from the bad orthodontist that set up for the whole mess to happen.  

They should have sunk it.

An American Navy ship fired on a boat in the Persian Gulf today, killing one person and injuring three others aboard the craft, U.S. naval officials told ABC News.
Lt. Greg Raelson, a spokesperson for the Navy's 5th Fleet, which is based in nearby Bahrain, said that a security team aboard the oil supply ship U.S.N.S. Rappahannock fired a .50 caliber machine gun at a "small motor vessel after it disregarded warnings and rapidly approached the U.S. ship" off the coast of Jebel Ali, a city approximately 30 miles from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 

abc link 

I can't help thinking our Navy personnel would be safer overall if they had a policy to scuttle the boats that did this, rather than just firing on the wheelman for deterrence.    I doubt if many speedboats play chicken with Chinese or Russian naval ships.

Two more good rides

I rode Shade last night.   A little bit short for a good training ride but I sure enjoyed it and I think she was ready to start some riding again after getting monday-saturday off after the 3-day weekend in WY.      I loff that little bay mare, but I was reminded again that she is more reactive than Sadie when they are both at their norms.

Rode Sadie this morning.   Ole was staying in the Shade near the house so I tied him there.  Saturday he was laying by the horse trailer but did not want to come with me so I just put his drag line on him -- then the little fiend went through the back fence and went wandering while I was riding.  Nice neighbors brought him back just I was preparing to go searching for him.  

 Sadie was quite good.   She made a half-hearted attempt to jump and take off running on the way home, a quarter mile after she had walked right past the discarded white  bathtub so I didn't even bother dismounting.  I guess leading her past it and encouraging her to sniff while I was keeping her safe since any monster would just settle for me on Saturday convinced her its nada to worry about.  So nice to be back to our normal.  

Good ride on Sadie last night

She was kind of grumpy about being asked to go out before getting her supper hay.  Did a hard duck on me at one point, I felt like she was testing me rather than just startled and made her turn a few tight circles.  Then I got off and led her past the scary packaging from a hot tub or something that someone put out in the middle of the moto-cross loop some kids built and the gun plingers like to shoot at junk for fun.   

But I never felt like she might be going to have a melt-down.   Just felt like typical young green horse resistance, and "OMG how did this new big thing get here" stuff and I'm pleased that she is back to thinking it is ok to stop and let me dismount, lead her past or over a scary thing and remount.   So I am happy.   I love that a few rides with a pocket full of treats given when I got on or off or sometimes just asked her to stop and stand was pretty much all it took to get past the "Aaack I can't stop and have you weight just one stirrup, the saddle will go under my belly and the stirrups will bang on my knee"  

I'm curious to learn the results of her allergy testing.   Her skin looks better with getting just garlic and the Platinum supplements and me not even spraying the natural fly repellent lately than it did when she was getting Benedryl and I was spraying her diligently so I think she has got to be allergic to the permethrin and/or pyrethrin in the serious sprays.   She still has some spider webbing on her rump and is getting a few new bite bumps on her neck though.   I think I will do the shots if the testing shows she is allergic to stuff that I cannot eliminate.   I sure hope she doesn't have the auto-immune genetic skin thing, but Dr Mike mentioned it but did not think it was likely when he drew the blood.  

Lady's sore feet seem to be getting gradually better.   CJ is a bit sore too.  I am watching but I don't think either is in danger of a laminitis episode from too short trimming, they are just tender after the fairy big change.   

Ugh hot morning today

I had to bite my tongue when mom turned the house exhaust fan on this morning --"It feels stuffy and still inside the house"     It was already getting hot and muggy outside (gauge read 80) so pulling in that air was not going to be useful, but I just waited a little bit and then turned the fan off and closed windows.    Some ceiling fans or oscillating fans would be useful for days like today when it seems silly to turn the AC on already but it feels like this but we only get this kind of weather a few days every year, we could just run the AC or deal with the higher humidity.  

I vented a bit about my paint color, my angst over them tearing out the big trees from the strip south of the parking lot and the fact that they were sprinkling a lawn strip next to the sidewalk at noon as I drove in to the admins.  It just slays me that they put in low flow toilets but they are sprinkling the damn sidewalk in the middle of the day.   Every watering guide ever issued in this area says not to waste water by sprinkling between 10 and 4.  

Poor Lady is footsore after her trim but she seems to be getting a bit better rather than worse and L is in Europe till July 26th so she only has to walk between hay and water on soft sand for 2.5 weeks while she regrows some hoof so I think it will be OK.   I should make a note to mention it to the farrier that she gets sore after a trim so he probably needs to make a point of leaving a bit more than he has been. 

Sadie still looks pretty good without getting benedryl so I am watching and just giving her the Platinum supplements and garlic.  I rode her wednesday morning and she did pretty good again.  Feels like impatient to get home rather than on the verge of a panic attack.  There is some time and training element but I think the Benedryl was making her a bit anxious or irritable.   I sure was not getting a sedative effect which I would not have minded. 

building renovations --good bad and ugly

So we are in the renovated builidng.   The good,  The offices seem to have good natural light, they are roomier than my interim office was.  Climate control is much better than it was, we have a nice big conference room and its right next to kitchenette  and copier room so that should be really convenient for meetings.  I like the colors of the carpeting and tile for the bathroom etc. 

The bad:  They took out quite a few big trees that had been on the south side of the parking lot.  I don't understand why they had to touch them, they were not close to the building.    Everything is low flow water saver again and it works just as pitifully as in the interim building. 

The ugly:  The outside entry door is cream colored.  IMO it looks like unfinished crap with the reddish gray brick exterior.   They ripped out the elm tree next to the door and I think the lilacs that had been on the other side of the steps and left and replaced with  the smelly pushy white flowered trees that *I* never cared for.   

 They have the exact same pukey green*  and pukey yellow* paint colors for some of their colors as in the interim building.  (I think its supposed to be some vegetable green and harvest gold, but IMO they both look like puke)     I was originally in an office that was to have a gray wall for 'color'  --gray is not much of a color but I figured that was fine-- I tend to choose gray shades a lot, sometimes being pleasantly surprised when a real color works out well.

Well I agreed to switch offices with someone concerned about noise and wouldn't you know it --now my office has the pukey yellow for its color wall and that is the wall I am set up to look at with how I had them place my desk.    Thank god for posters, maps, etc. and you better believe the white board and cork boards are going on that wall.   

I could get used to a 4 hour work week

We were asked to work from home or take PTO  from Tuesday on last week.    I worked about 4 hours on the 4th and a little bit on Tuesday.  I had scheduled to take thursday-today as vacation previously to go up to WY and ride.    Except for a muscle spasm in my right shoulder/trapezoid I'm getting after about 70 minutes of driving I felt pretty good all weekend.    Feels so good to have finally got to an endurance ride.   I only did the limited distance and on the middle of 3 days just walked the 11 mile poker ride loop with my dad.  

 Took Sadie up for camping experience but did not ride her except for a tiny bit in camp on saturday.   Just worked on going a little away from the trailer and asking her to stand nicely for me to dismount and then leading her back and going a little farther.    Today after driving home and a few hours rest for each of us I rode Sadie our little 3 mile loop.   She did quite well.   Finally I think we are back to about where we were before the saddle under belly incident this spring.  

I'm going to miss Ace

Well I'll probably still read his posts but I have got to cut myself off from the comments section.   It was so peaceful last weekend being away from the internet.  The good feeling of knowing I'm not alone in thinking conservatively is being more than offset by the negativity lately.   I'll have to work other sources for information bits that I used to pick up in the comments section or perhaps I'll just be blissfully ignorant.   I know I'm voting straight R ticket in November,  primary is over in my state .....

Well Darn .....

I was expecting to get out from under a lot of archiving and hard drive disk cleanup when M came back after deciding she could not be happy working at IBM.   But I guess she negotiated with the bosses that she will do more programming and not get stuck with so much boring routine stuff that she does not have time to program.

Good news is that she has some plans to automate some of this stuff rather than letting the self proclaimed guru twerp say it cannot be automated indefinitely but in the meantime I'm still the one worrying about making sure a stupid disk overflow does not shut down processing.

 Today I ordered Sadie an expensive supplement that is supposed to help horses resist skin allergies.  Hope it works for her.   Her fly sheet was rubbing her shoulders.   I have concerns that the new one has a similar enough cut that it will rub too although the brand is supposed to be better for stuff like that.    Little twerp is too much hair pulling and not much fun right now,  if that does not change I may have to see if I could interest a breeder in her bloodlines. 

I hate the thought of it; but I also tend to think people are being stupid when they cling to a horse or dog or whatever when they are just not compatible.   I will give us 6 to 8 months to get into a better state and if there is not good progress towards that I will try to place her elsewhere.    She has the prettiest floaty trot so perhaps a sport horse breeder would be interested in her and she does have a nice mind.   Here we are;  not clicking real well right now but she stands and lets me crawl on in my awkward style and she has been quite patient with me messing around trying to rasp her feet into a decent state and using the hoof jack etc etc. 

Well that was weird

Went to my centered riding clinic.  Sadie was a nut case and I had to use Shade in the clinic.   Having a buddy is better for at the trailer but so much worse for going off to do something by themselves.   I should have remembered this,  I had so much frustration hauling Grey and Shade to rides together with them acting like fools for pre-vetting.    But I think Sadie was not ready for the clinic even w/o that effect and I  got some good riding improvements that should help me get Shade lighter on her forehand so her arthritic fetlock won't catch and cause so many little stumbles.    I tend to ride too forward and that makes the horse heavier on the forehand --sounds so obvious but it was a lightbulb moment for me, I had been having angst about the stumbling, thinking it was the arthritis getting worse --now I know I can greatly reduce the stumbling even if there is an element of fetlock stiffness with it happening.   

When it was time to go the organizer came over to say good-bye to the gal parked next to me and said she was waiting to make sure K had no problems with her youngster.   I suppose she watched w/o interfering as I got my mares loaded.   I had to make Shade give up her preferred  open slot and load first (well maybe didn't have to but I did it) and get a second lead rope so I could keep Sadie's head pointed the correct direction.  I was initially thinking 'WTH wouldn't H help me?' but I have decided its probably a vote of confidence really.  If she thought I was going to have a bad situation that might place the farm owner under any liability bind or been bad for my young horse she would have stepped in, or if I had asked for help I'm sure she would not have refused,  I do like to load by myself if I can,  I don't want to start any dependencies where I couldn't haul out unless there is loading help along.