Ole's surgery scar

He has a scar in the shape of the original incision.  Barely a scar, but no hair growth for now.  Seems kind of odd that the scar is back to the original incision shape after it pulled into a round shape when the stitches failed and the initial healing happened as a decreasing diameter circle.   Now if the Adequan shots will reduce his arthritis pain for a year or two.   I feel bad about the back arthritis since that is probably the result of the bale I accidentally dropped on him.   But he was getting some arthritis in his back legs before that so not beating myself up too much. 

8.3 miles the last two days

I took a quick spin on Sadie Friday and straggled into work late.   Rode again late this morning and beat the mini 'storm' system that came in this afternoon.  We'll be lucky to get 1/2 inch of snow but the temperature dropped and the wind was blowing pretty strong already by 2pm.  Went across the highway and added a bit of mileage and a nice little change up from my rut.

I gave Ole his second Adequan shot today.   I was reading on-line how to give an IM shot to dogs and ran across some info that the shots can be given subcutaneously to dogs so I'm doing that since I also read that the shots can sting given IM and Ole can tighten his leg muscles to quite a hard state so it might be hard to slip a needle in gently.   I sure hope that this relieves his arthritis pain, I feel so bad when he has gimpy days.  

Yay, I'm getting a thank-you card for Christmas

I guess bro is going through the phase I had a few years ago where I just wanted to skip the whole Christmas shopping hassle.   I'm reminding myself that I had the same phase and I still don't like to shop,  I've been taking advantage of his tight budget as an excuse to just send checks and I have not even been writing "enjoy a day in San Francisco" or some similar gift yourself suggestion on the cards.   Hopefully he or his DW gets sentimental in a bit and I will at least get a newsy letter and card and maybe he'll send me a book or cd for old times sake,  I kind of miss getting rock CDs.

Monday on FB the family that I gave a couple trailer rides to trails was in the town where I work and dropped off a cookie plate to their horses former owner.   We had just gotten a cookie package from the folks that rent the inherited farm property up in ND so not getting more sweets was in some ways a good thing and the family had posted that the old arab gelding at their boarding facility that they have sort of adopted was in great weight after getting scarily skinny in Sept when we had the big rains and his pen had been a mud pit. 

Still I was kind of bummed she didn't message me; I would have told her I had more of the high fat horse supplement in my car and they should swing by so they'd have it just in case the old guy started loosing weight again and I would have taken a cookie plate,  we had lots of sweets but we didn't have lemon bars or streupwaffles (sp?)  My great aunts had gotten a cookie iron in their later years and used to make some cookies that I think were very similar to the Streupwaffles although my aunts rolled theirs up and didn't put any cinnamin sugar filling in them, cinn and sugar with butter was only for lefse.  I cannot recall what my aunts cookies were called, my spotty memory is so annoying. 

   Oh well,  I didn't step in and take them trail riding last summer because I was angling for cookies, I know how to cook and I can bake my own sweets any time I really crave them; I just prefer to spend my time riding for now and if its too cold and snowy to want to be outside I prefer curling up with a cup of tea and a good book to starting a baking project; I know from experience that I'll have had my fill of a baking project before its finished let alone before cleaning up unless I only make no-bake drop cookies or something like that with limited steps and dishes involved.   I enjoyed this families company for its own sake and hopefully we will ride together a time or two next year too. 

Unfortunate timing

A FB friend posted a youtube link to the Seinfeld Festivus and said 'let the airing of grievances begin' this morning.  She is not anti-Christmas in general and had a tongue out emoticon but it still hit me that I am so damned tired of the war on Christianity and I replied that there were over 300 days where the non-religious rule so they shouldn't have to piss on the few days that do have meaning to others.   I apologized for venting on her joke post and she accepted but it is unfortunate that I snapped at her; she does not believe in government as the only allowable religion. 

  That post was just a tiny straw that broke my restraint.   Working with liberals I believe the only reason we no longer have an ugly 'festivus pole' up along with secularized christmas and Hanukhah decorations that don't include anything like a nativity,  star or angel on the trees, or menorah,  just trees, lights (is there any group that doesn't have some sort of festival of lights) and some Dreidels  is that the ugly pole got lost when the building was renovated.   I would have pitched it myself if I'd had access to it, perhaps someone else shared my feelings and took advantage of the opportunity to toss it in a dumpster.   The goofs at work who put it up were 'just joking' too; and the hipster douche writers that came up with the theme for Seinfeld were probably just joking and 'oh we are poking fun at people who whine about the holiday not really attacking the holiday itself.'  Except the Seinfeld writes and the liberal work snots weren't joking really, they were taking away even from the already secularized holiday because 'its not 100% inclusive, waaah.'  with any means available because they want 'no other gods before government' 

Short ride Sunday, What was so wonderful about James Dean?

Saturday night dad flipped to 'Rebel without a cause'   What a weird movie.  Perhaps it would have made a little more sense if the beginning was not missed as I didn't have any backstory for the just a bit younger boy who was trying to latch onto Dean's character as a father figure because his parents were off somewhere and just sending a house keeper money for his support.  How he even met Dean etc.  

 The feminazis and pajama boy men of today would both be up in arms about the way Deans parenets were portrayed.   I didn't think Dean was anything special as far as acting the conflicted character,  but he probably got acclaim from the critics because the movie plot was right up their alley. 

I had somehow gotten the notion years and years ago that Steve McQueen died doing a movie stunt or in a car accident and was surprised to learn this weekened he died of mesothelioma.   Of course the military gets the blame from the usual suspects for exposing him to asbestos but not any credit for teaching him the self discipline that helped him to become a great actor and racer rather than just a two-bit hood. 

It was calm and sunny on Sunday and at least a few degrees above freezing so I took a short ride on Sadie.  She was funny,  I noticed there was still ice in the ditch so I'm thinking 'confirmed not going to mess with water crossing practice'  but Sadie didn't get the mental message and was acting like "oh no we can't go near the ditch"  and I'm like "you got that right we are not messing with that ice in the ditch but you have to stay here on the nice road next to the ditch, we are NOT going off into the CRP area that is full of gopher and prairie dog holes."  

Well we got cards sent out

And I have a bit more riding bug back.  I did not ride Tuesday or Thursday because I was too slow getting moving to both ride and get a bit of decorating and cards sent etc for Christmas.  Monday and Wednesday I rode and just was late getting to work.   This morning it was cold and frosty so I was content to just finish up getting cards ready to mail with dad.    I hope its warm enough in the afternoons to get little rides in this weekend.  I do better at maintaining serenity if I get a little ride in fairly often.

Too hot

Cue ominous music and AGW hysteria.   LOL.     I have to run upstairs and get rid of my long johns though.  I'm over warm and it is making me lazy.    I want to keep getting little rides in on Sadie and should start piddling with setting up the outdoor nativity.   I do like having a few Christmas decorations and I don't know if its accurate or a result of the cold week and a half starting wednesday after Thanksgiving but it seems like I'm seeing fewer lights up this year.   I know I've kind of had a 'stock the bunker' rather than 'eat drink and be merry' mindset lately so perhaps I'm projecting,  I still some some lights, just seems like not as many places as previous years.  

 Well had a nice ride on Sadie but I will just have to try to get moving faster tomorrow to do any Christmas decorating.   Dad is hanging some icicle lights though so I'll probably come home to some lights tonight :)  

Maybe I'll get another 6-day stretch of rides in.

I rode Sadie Friday and Saturday.   Short rides of 3 and 4.3 miles but we both got some fresh air.   Saturday I went to a morondezvous after riding.   Inside term.   It was the first non-horse related thing I've done just for myself in I don't know how long.   It was really great to put 'meat-space' names and faces to some fellow conservatives that congregate on the internet.    I learned the backstory for Pronothotary sp? Warbler.    I had even read Whittaker Chamber's Witness autobiography in college but my vague recollection is that Chamber focused more on his background of why he got sucked into the commie party and then left and didn't include much juicy stuff about the Alger Hiss case.   Rightly Southern very much matched his moniker.   

Working in a nest of bubbled and cocooned liberals as I do it was really very nice meeting up with fellow conservatives, especially smart ones.  If we could pull off a coup to get control of most of the media I think we could save this country from the death spiral into socialist shit-hole.   Perhaps with the rise of twitter and so on we (well they as I'm pretty luddite) will be able to show more young people what a bunch of fakers and Baghdad Bobs the MarxSpewMedia are. 

I signed up for a pyramid scheme 'vitamin/supplement' company with a friend.  Huge sigh,  I like this friend and I let my distaste for looking at you-tube videos keep me from doing my homework plus was lazy and didn't search on-line for independent info.    I will cancel with the company before my next autoship comes.   My initial impression when I heard the price total and then got my stuff which was one persons serving for a month with an extra product vs the two person basic level I thought I was getting was 'OMG severe price-gouging, this is mainly a pyramid scheme' and now taking the supplements and reading the ingredients I think the products are also snake-oil marketing terms slapped on some basic juice and vitamins.  E.g. one is supposed to hydrate cells "oxygenated water and proprietary mineral salt blend,  hmmm,  sounds suspiciously like a super weak hydrogen peroxide solution with a bit of trace mineral salt"  

    I'm trying to decide if the cleansing product is possibly pulling crap out of my system and making me feel temporarily bad but will be good for me down the road, or one of the products is kicking up my rhinitis, or just coincidentally I've eaten extra white flour the past few days and that is getting to me or just this time of year is aggravating my chronic rhinitis.  I guess I'll know if I feel better before I run out of the stuff or after I get through it.   Yeah, even though I think the products are pretty much snake oil marketing terms, I do think its possible the cleansing herbal mixture is clearing some gunk out of my body, just with stuff that I could have bought at Vitamin Cottage for 1/10 of the price.  

I am a bit stressed because I would have liked to help my friend out if this was something where there is a fairly decent product behind the marketing, like Discovery Toys, or Watkins or something but I'm not going to pay crazy money for this stuff and no way in hell would I try to con friends or relatives into paying that crazy money so that I'd rise a level in the pyramid and get the stuff cheaper.  My friend would never con folks, she has bought the con and believes the product is good stuff and maybe it has helped some of the folks taking it, especially if they had poor nutrition before, but I'm skeptical of stuff in general and pretty sure this is snake oil and a pyramid scheme; I hope my friend does not get burned when the pyramid collapses. 

Well I read some good books this week

Read a lot of novelettes.   A fictional biography of Leonardo da Vinci's early years by Cahterine Jaime,  kind of interesting, I might buy the complete biography if its cheap but it was not entertaining enough that I'd pay a whole lot. 

Raiders by Ross Kemp.   I'll probably buy this,  the sample description of the British raid on Italian warships at Taranto was very cool.  I really like when an author can recount factual incidents like this in a way that is as gripping as a good novel.  

Deadly Aim, Patricia Rushford.    Angel Delaney mysteries book #1.   I'll probably buy the next book.  I don't feel like I'm 100% hooked on the series if there are a lot of books but it was a pretty fun read with a bit of Christianity rather than gaia worship or leftyism as a backdrop to the main story so instead of putting up with the backdrop I liked it.  Also liked that it was just a backdrop and not pushing it. 

Could not get into The Norman Ten Hundred bu Stanley Blicq.    It may be just that world war 1 is so depressing in the numbers of casualties.  

Read Attacked (Last plane out of Paris, part one) by Paul Maxham.     I am not sucked in and wanting to buy the full novel although a daring espionage/French Resistance tale from WW2 should have been very engrossing.

I read a fair amount of sci-fi/fantasy and found "Call of the Herald" by Brian Rathbone on my kindle.  It was pretty good,  the intro had been lame and I had left it unread for months but was running low on material as my internet was wonky this weekend and it was too cold to do any more outside than feeding the horses so I was spending a lot of time on my kindle.  

I finished up A Flowershop in Baghdad by Michael Banzet last week.   A really good book describing Banzet's background of entering the USAF as enlisted and working up to being a Major as the first third of the book was a neat biography in itself and then Major Banzet describes efforts to rebuild the Iraqi AF,  a neat account of the good people there -- I couldn't read too much of this at once because I kept wondering how much progress has been undone since the MarxSpewMedia connived to get TFG elected and re-elected here. 

Well on the plus side I rode Sadie 6 days in a row before the cold front hit last night

On the negative front my grand mileage total for that 6 days was only 24 miles.   Oh well this is still not bad at all for late November and into December and I included some good longish canters and also some going into the irrigation ditch with a bit of water in it.    Not being skeered to cross water is an important skill for an endurance horse and I have to seize opportunities to practice living on the sand hill. 

I need to do better at putting my shoulder to the wheel at work, I've been slacking a bit lately and can't really afford to be doing that.   I keep expecting the house of cards to fall, but things might go on for decades and I don't need to get myself terminated because I'm too distracted wondering about what I'll do after the SHTF to do keep up with my phoney baloney feeling job.