Holy Toledo, we need a lot of hay

Figured up roughly how much hay we should buy this summer just to have a year's supply to get though until next summer.  Crikey with what I think are reasonable #'s we need at least 900 bales.   That is going to be a bite if its $10-$12 per bale again.   No wonder I'm seeing fresh rounds of cheap horses on CL this year.  

But maybe it will make part leases appealing if I put ads out for some of the twerps we have that are barely getting ridden.   I've been on the verge of submitting ads and then had cold feet a couple of times now in the last couple of months.     I'm still not wild about the whole process, its a bit of a time suck but its sure been nice having L come and ride Lady so I get riding company some and I don't feel like a horse collector who has a ton of horses that only get looked at in the paddock.   Would like to get that going for at least one of AJ, CJ or Razz, maybe get the mini's gelded and make dad do a bit of driving with them so they have some possibility of usefulness and could possibly be salable.

Its snowing :)

Unfortunately I was not ambitious enough to move any horse manure from the paddocks to the pasture.   It seems like an almost hopelessly big task to try and re-hab the pasture to full usefulness.  And partly I still don't want to invest too much energy and certainly not too much money into the Colorado place.   Stupid dem legislature here is going to pass some PITA gun laws that will not affect crime in any way, just start the process of limiting 2nd amendment rights.   Stupid local MBM are pushing the fantasy that guns are the problem and its wonderful that the Dems want to do help by keeping these large capacity magazines out of the hands of crazies.

  I just want out and I have a hard time convincing myself at all that improving the property would pay off.    I don't see dad wanting to move although I suppose I should sound him out before I assume that is cast in stone.  

I did ride 3 horses in 3 days from Friday-Sunday.   Rode Shade on Friday, just a little ride to check out her arthritis.   No stumbling so that was good.   L was out on both saturday and Sunday and I rode Shade saturday and grabbed RazzMo on Sunday as a check out ride to see if he should be OK if her friend comes out to ride.  He should but he was acting fairly prancy and did not sell himself as an easy ride.   But if I go out on Shade I'm sure Razz would just relax and follow his boss mare,  he just doesn't count Lady as enough of a leader to trust she would spot any trouble so he can just relax and follow her. 

Rode today

I felt like I needed to ride after the last week of buying, hauling and stacking hay and then I bought bagged horse feed yesterday.   So I had a lovely short ride on Shade, finally using my new Skito pad that I've had for 2 weeks or more.   What little riding I've done in that time was on Ms. Sadie.   

Yesterday I renewed my AERC membership and finally got Sadie enrolled.   Now I must keep riding her and get her ready to do the official rides.   She is progressing and I think she will be fine but I should try to organize taking her to some lessons and trail rides to get her more exposure before entering rides since there is a lot of horse adrenalin flowing at the official AERC rides and my horses have always picked up on that and been more up than normal. 

Horse poor

I don't know whether I double counted a stack or figured the 6 horses I usually feed in two groups of 3 as only 1 group of 3 but I  noticed early this week that the hay supply seemed to be shrinking fast and sure enough when I counted how many bales we had and figured how much we were feeding I found I only had about 4 months worth when I had thought we had hay to get to August back in the fall.    Twelve dollar per bale hay really takes a bite out of the savings account when you find you need to buy around 150 bales.  

I have got to get busy with CL ads or something to at least find some of those 4 legged dependents some part/time lease situations.   Hopefully there won't be another bad drought year right away where $12 becomes the new normal for hay prices but I suspect we won't get below $7 in the future and $9-$10 will become the average with $12+ in leaner hay years.   Horses really are an expensive 'hobby' just to own them.  

Wondering when the polars bears threatened by excess ice talk will start

Or maybe it will be Penguins since arctic ice has quite a ways to go before it is more widespread then in the 80s and 90s are probably a good ways before it is thicker as  well but wattsupwiththat doesn't have historical images for ice thickness. 

I'm a bit embarrassed that I took so long to catch on to the so called environmentalists and CAGW crowd.  I consider myself fairly cynical and reasonably intelligent.  But science articles are full of deep insider details and equations and with me working with scientists in a related field who are honest, even reasonably aware of and wary about expectation biases I was susceptible. 

Interesting dead pool idea.   Which will fail first?   the CAWG scam,  U.S. currency, the EU/EURO, the fragile semi-state of peace in the Mideast or some other domino that was not in my mind just now?  

I'm only a weak Broncos fan

I don't even watch their games if prime riding weather overlaps.  Might catch the starts if they are playing in the east and are the early game or when the days are short I'll catch some final minutes of the game when they are the second Sunday game.  And I'm usually reading or web surfing and not focused on the game then.

So I'm surprised how hard it hit me when they lost to the Ravens on Saturday.    I felt like the night of Nov. 6 all over again.   Why oh why are the bad guys winning?   Its silly - the Bronco's are not some perfect sportsmanship team.  I think Peyton Manning is a class act and the conservatives at AOSHQ like to rail a bit when sports commentators slobber over Ray Lewis who probably killed a man in a bar fight so there is a little bit of "face of the team"  nice guy vs.  thug that got away with it and possibly cleaned up his act a little bit and focused on job.   But overall --Bronco's hired the cheater's apprentice as head coach a few years ago and he was let go because they were losing and Josh had hired the videographer who had got caught doing illegal filming when he worked for the cheatriots under Bellicheat and the dummy got caught doing it again.

Only god knows if Bowlen would have fired Josh if he was getting wins and they got embarrassed by the cheating videoing but LOSING and getting caught cheating was too much.  And they were mealy-mouthed at best in handling going after Peyton and dropping Tebow as part of that deal after Tebow rescued the franchise in 2011 when the team was not just losing but playing a boring game with the losses at the end and Denver city/county itself is a stupid hive of leftist voters, and I suspect also of some campaign volunteers that posed as election workers for early voting and fed the machines 'on behalf of ' many dead and moved away voters. 

 So I know I shouldn't really try to pin good guys vs bad guys labels on sports and even if that was not foolish the Blue and Orange and their home city are no saints;  but even so it just sucks that the AFC champs will either be the killer's team or the Barry donating Cheatriots.  And nice guy Rogers  and the Packers are out in the NFC too.

  I hope the year of the Snake (which hasn't started yet by Chinese calendar) has more "don't tread on me" snake successes  and less triumph for the sneaky snakes in the grass, but I must learn to be the 'happy warrior' and not get depressed when things seem to keep going the wrong way. 

Al Gore, world class conman

It is rather delicious and sad at the same time that the lefties are probably defending him as I type even after he has sucked 100's of millions directly from them as well as the billions to his cronies and any pet groups he promoted.   Got on board the AGW bandwagon and used his connections and fame to establish voluntary carbon credit markets;  I believe he pulled out before those markets crashed, at any rate he was insulated from the crash.   Then he establishes Current TV,   uses his fame and connections to get on lots of cable markets  -- and sells to Al Jezeera --THE media company funded by and partnered with big Oil,  and of course promoting Sharia (the only modern theocratic governance on the globe)  Of course the average lefty never questions why their "self labeled elites" are always pushing Islam.   Average idiots just think "well they are under dogs so we cheer for them because of that"  

News flash averge leftist:  Islam is not the under dog.  57 countries with Muslim majorities.  Many of those with Sharia law.   1 billion members of the "religion."  I use the scare quotes because it is more of a political cause than a religion,  they just hide the politics under the cloak of religion until they can seize political control of a country (See Iran,  Egypt with Muslim Brotherhood,  etc etc) 

Plugging along

I filled out an internet form and got a permit to burn brush last week and we had calm winds and forecast to stay that way all day on Saturday so we burned the new brush pile built with the small branches when our neighbor hooked us up with someone who cut down our dead trees for firewood.

The big pile that has been building up over time is too close to the fence and other trees to burn where it sits so I've been pecking away at it.  Its like a giant 3-d puzzle to get branches loose to haul over to the burn spot 40 feet away.   I think I'll ask dad to see if we can get someone to take the larger branches from this pile for firewood so we won't have a hot fire into the night, plus I just hate wasting anything.   We will have to see if there are enough large diameter pieces to be worth someone coming to fetch them I guess.  Possibly if its not a large amount we could haul up to ND when we go in April,  sis and her SO use the woodstove quite a bit in the wintertime and dad is talking about taking his p/u anyway.

Sunday L came out and we went about 4.3 miles on Lady and Sadie.    Sadie's new thing is I paused a couple times to chat with someone and wait on the dog and when I turned her around she burst into a canter.   I don't think she was upset that Lady had gotten a bit ahead so much as she is young and full of energy so she is seizing any excuse.   No bucking and I wouldn't call it bolting since I can slow her down right away so I'm just enjoying it.   Sounds a bit odd but I do enjoy it --its an ego boost that I am not fearful that I'll come off,  and I'm starting to have a bit of faith that Sadie is not going to go full bronco or bolt and part of the reason I have my horses is to get that second hand feeling of agility and speed.

I bought a second Skito pad yesterday.   I was so excited that the owner had them on Ebay,  I had been browsing Ebay to see if I could just get a second hand one more for the easy instant purchase instead of having to call during normal business hours than my cheapskate nature.   So both mares will be able to have comfortable pads w/o me having to rotate pads between saddles.  I like to use the girth keeper straps on at least one side when I ride to make sure the pad stays in place so it can be a bit of a PITA to switch pads between saddles.   

Today I am going to order a pommel insert for the CL treeless saddle I bought a few years ago.  I'm trying to get it setup to be a good saddle for Grey Moun so I can hop on him a little more often or possibly throw someone else on him if there is a group that wants to ride. 

snork, talk about bitter clingers

 Perspectives on female leadership opportunities and experiences

The glass ceiling — intact, cracked or shattered?

Working in a male-dominated environment

Work/life balance challenges

Changes witnessed over the years

 

Actual bullet points from a seminar for women at my workplace.  What male dominated environment?   Possibly my building is skewed but there are so many programs focused on 'support'  and with administration dominated by women the office population skews to the female gender.  Even within the more technical jobs there is a pretty good percentage of women, its hardly accurate to say the field is male dominated anymore.   

I absolutely loathe when women in this country cling to notions that they are overcoming barriers.   Umm maybe our gender as a group worries more about family life so has some built in dis-advantage  -- but there is no male patriarchy holding women down in this country in this century.

And I believe most of the ones who wring their hands about perceived BS slights here, are all "we cant criticize the religion of pieces that would be culturally insensitive" even as the ROP subjects females to really nasty stuff like honor killings,  genital mutilations (don't care that its mostly the older women doing that to girls) spelling out how husbands can beat their wives ...........

Started the new year with a ride at least

Rode Sadie on the last Sunday in 2012 with L on Lady and rode Shade a couple miles on the January 1 holiday.    Both rides were a bit cool, but I was dressed warm enough.   Poor L was under-dressed for the wind on Sunday.   I keep telling her to at least wear long johns under jeans.  She'll figure it out if she makes it out on colder days.   Last year I got sick in December and it lingered + she was traveling to visit relatives and in-laws over the holidays and then a bunch for work so she just didn't make it out when it was colder. 

I have been cooking a little bit more at home.   I don't know that I'll do more than 1 meal a week once I'm back to 5-day work weeks but for now its cool.   Dad doesn't find my cooking that good or doesn't care for eating leftovers or both.   Probably both.   Some of the stuff I've made I was not wild about how it ended up tasting and he is picky but some stuff I thought turned out pretty good that I made a big batch of, he eats it maybe one or 2 more meals and I end up taking it to work to eat myself to get it ate up before it goes bad.    Guess I'll limit how much I make if he'd rather eat soup and sammiches  or popcorn and jerky or whatever than re-heat meals.   

I should come up with a plan to do some more socializing of some kind.  I hate most social venues (any large sized group of people and especially in loud settings like a bar or many parties) but when the country collapses and it will happen at some point; I probably wont be able to substitute internet interactions for real life social contact.