Quick catch up post

Lets see.  After my Thursday the 20th ride I did skip riding that Friday and I think I also skipped on Saturday.   L came out intending to ride with me late morning on Sunday and Lady was limping with a swollen left knee.  I suspect Sadie must have kicked her.   L was a great sport, did not want to ride Lady and possibly aggravate an injury w/o me saying anything and just hung out for a while using the shedding blade on all the paddock horses and I went ahead and rode Sadie about 4 miles.   Ole had been excited to come but then when L was not coming and dad was outside he decided he had to stay; dad let him back in the yard while I was riding.  I put some ointment on a small cut and wiped some arnica liniment on Lady's knee. 

Monday Lady was quite gimpy, with more swelling of the knee and the weather felt cold and nasty.  So I gave her bute and a powdered antibiotic and just put some furacin  and DMSO on the knee then called Dr Mikes office with a request that she be seen within a few days.   They called back and he could swing by on Tuesday 'about 5pm'.

   Trying to force myself to work one early shift results in a totally unproductive day so I took PTO Tuesday.   I ran my car over to get serviced and rode Sadie about 6.7 miles.   I was going to ride only 5 miles but after leading her across the irrigation ditch she was all worked up and since I had plenty of time I just rode her back to the highway to use the road bridge.    Dr Mike made it out about 6 pm, I had expected that 5 was best case time,  While waiting I finally got around to putting DOT reflective tape that I had bought over a month ago on my big trailer.   I have a rather random pattern of tape strips but it should be nice and visible now.  I had noticed when feeding with the headlight this winter that the DOT tape on my little trailer really popped in the light and 'huh, my big trailer doesn't have any tape on it.'    

Lady got a full leg compression wrap (because otherwise a knee wrap slides down) with instructions to take it off on Saturday and keep giving her the antibiotic for 10 days and bute for a few days as needed.   She got bute Monday, Wed. and today as she didn't seem very sore Thursday or Friday and I figured I'd give her a dose for the anti-swelling effect with removing the wrap.   She was a pill to get tranquilized although at least she didn't rear and fight hard, was tense as could be and then kept jerking her head and shifting the needle.   She was a model patient once the sleepy drugs worked and has been good in the pen by herself.  We shall see how unwrapping the leg goes but I think she'll stand fairly OK tied up.

Wed I took a quick ride because it was predicted to be cold and damp Thursday and into Friday morning.    There was a fair breeze and Sadie was all stirred up so I discarded vague plans to ride out and back on my usual 4 mile quick ride and just made her do circles in the oil line pipe strip that I use like my personal arena.  We worked away down to the irrigation ditch and back heading east and then I did serpentines (is TOO a word) on the strip that runs 500 yards or so north and back.

Thursday there was a trace of snow on the ground but was sunny and warming but I slept in and was dragging.   I have some allergy sinus thing going that is making me batty.  Not full on sick but I get stuffy and tinges of the pressure I get when I have an actual sinus infection.  Plus my nose has gotten all sensitive.   Wish my vision would improve and the sense of smell fade but no such luck.   Friday similar weather but a bit of a cold breeze + I decided I needed to get the snow tires off my car so I skipped riding and went to the tire place.   I guess it has a new owner since I last bought tires, still somewhat of a vibe of 'oh okay I guess we can accept your business if you insist.' but not quite as much.

I worked late Friday night.  Stupid coding mistake on my apart,  declaring a variable inside an if statement in perl means the variable is only defined within the if -endif brackets.   I may have known this at one time before, but what a tarball at the end of the week trying to figure out how I had broken the program. 

Took a super short ride on Sadie today

That is not the way to get her endurance fit, but it was good for my mental health.   I'm now fairly sure that I have some spring allergy or literal hay fever going on.   I have had a mild sore throat a couple times when I wake up but it does not persist and even if I had a very rare cold w/o sore throat first, I would have gotten the streaming nose by now.   Maybe a few trees are in some kind of bloom already, more likely the dusty hay that I've been worried would set Sadie's skin allergies off has been setting me off and I need to just do a quick look to decide if a specific bale is too dusty for her to eat and STOP sniffing question mark bales to see if they smell musty to me.   It won't do me much good to keep her allergies down if I get so much sinus swelling and nasal drip that a stupid sinus infection gets started, especially if I end up with arrrghhhh weeks of hassle before the right antibiotic, taking it long enough combo is prescribed.  

Still I think I will skip riding tomorrow morning, they are predicting fairly cold until mid-afternoon.  Maybe I will force myself to do a big Target run and stock up on frozen entrees and stuff,  but I stopped at Walgreens on the way home last night and got Sudafed and big multi-pack of Raman noodles so I can now push off doing a grocery run and get by with adding Raman to soups from the deep freeze and stuff.  

Sadie gets a gold star for not being silly when the motorcycle passed us while we were in the ditch.  Rider was nice, slowed down and all that but Sadie was good.  Then she proved she is an ayrab by acting concerned looking at the rider when he 1/2 mile off and riding next to the ditch.   She doesn't like when she sees motion and doesn't know what it is.  She was only mildly concerned though, no whirling dervish, big sideways teleports or anything.   I think I got myself a pretty good horse for my I'm not a seasoned citizen yet but I'm starting to get too old to fall years.

chasing my tail

I should have called my vet last week to get Shade more Previcoxx and ask about Adequan or a substitute to give to Ole.   But I did not.  Saturday I felt like I as getting sick and it was blowing all day.  I did move a few forkfuls of manure from Shade and Grey's pen just by hand.  That was dumb since I was feeling off but it didn't make me feel yucky so maybe the non-aerobic exercise was OK.

Sunday it was nice,  I was lazy in the morning, didn't even call L until almost 11.  She called back at 1 to say not coming till Monday.    I felt like my balance was a bit off so I didn't ride.  I did run the tractor and do more cleaning but was tired and quit with the project not done.  I didn't do any laundry so I'll just about have to do some mid-week now.

Monday L came out and we rode,  I went to stop to send registered letter to the pyramid scheme corp and I had left the stinking letter at home after finding an address label for it.  Called vets from work to pick up Previcoxx and gave Shade the last dose I had.    Fed the last of my complete feed.

Today,  found just a bit of some old complete feed in my trailer mixed with bran so horses got that mixed with the almost gone sweet feed.   Was running late, again,  stopped to get more horse feed as that seemed more urgent than the Previcoxx.  Shade has been looking pretty spry lately.  Its such a pendulum, a few weeks ago I was thinking I'd be having to start dosing her daily as she seemed to walking stiffly on the mornings after her skip days.   Called the vet office to let them know I was not going to get there to pick up the pills today cuz  was no way going to be there before they closed for their lunch break.   Finally got the "Cancel me or ELSE" letter sent with certification.  $6.49 to get the USPS to collect a signature and mail me back the postcard with it, but the tiny PollyAnna side was no line at all.

I have also not gotten groceries and must stop and get some tomorrow to heat and eat at work.  I also have not tackled the darned taxes and I need to do the fed ones a little ahead of time so I can get the state ones done by the big deadline. 

DST afternoon blues or early spring allergies?

I have been feeling tired every afternoon this week and also stuffy.  I've been avoiding dragging my fat ass outside to jog because of the possibly sinus issues.  At least that is the rationale I'm using.   I should substitute walking and see how it goes but I've had a couple instances of regressing backwards trying to exercise too soon after being sick and I get OCD about avoiding sinus infections because the last two dragged on and on.   And the OCD has worked,  I've only gotten two infections in something like the last 10 years where I used to get one every year. 

I did ride Sadie Thursday and L came out and we rode today.  Somewhat shortened rides.  3.6 miles yesterday and crossed the irrigation ditch.   I got off and led Sadie across and then when she wanted to cross back over rather than go the much longer route I had thought about doing and just crossing back on the road over the culvert, I went "eh running late this morning, and extra water practice works"  Sadie started to go down at a spot we've crossed before but the soft mud scared her so she did a rollback back onto the dirt road next to the ditch.  Then we went to the spot I had led her across and she wavered just a bit and walked down and into the 3 inch deep water.   Stopped, got a horse cookie, walked across, psyched herself up for just a second and came up the bank on that side.

Today we just went 4 miles and didn't cross the ditch or anything.   I should have gone to the PO, but was running a bit late if we had had our normal daily mini-meeting --which didn't happen anyway -- sigh.   Oh well,  it will work to send the registered letter on Monday to the dammed Multi-Level-Marketing outfit demanding to cancel as a member.   I have the letter I wrote two months ago to cancel that to go along with the form they want to cancel the auto-ship sending something every month.   I did not have that form in PDF, apparently I only printed it directly from their web so I tried to find it again vs crossing out dates a second time and after finally tracking it down and turning off pop-up blocker on my browser I got a page not found error.    I was steaming mad and wrote a nastygram letter demanding they cancel me; letting them know the liquid vitamins taste disgusting,  what I think their cell water consists of,  that I would have just stuck with the green coffee extract if they didn't gouge so badly for shipping but that their greediness there sealed me being DONE with them and if I have to go to state agencies and making arrangements with my bank to block payments I would be merciless.      So I stuck both the polite letter and the "eff you" nasty gram in the same envelope.   Perhaps it will scare them straight even better thinking I am psycho.

  Actually I have this mental image that I will get the letter back as undeliverable and will have to call them again and tell them they signed me up with only a few mouse clicks and they better cancel me w/o demanding written notice since they are using a fake address or I will go to state agencies in a merciless mode.   But they did at least pause my autoship for two months like the customer rep said he would do so I think they will cancel me rather than have me turn to the government.   Since I didn't mail it yet I suppose I should give my friend a heads up,  I've been being cowardly and have avoided telling her I think she is involved with a pyramid scheme and that I'm opting out. 

Rode Sat,Sunday and this morning.

Apparently it was after midnight on the blog's clock when I posted my Sat ride hurray.   L came out on Sunday about 11am and we rode about 5.5 miles with some good cantering.   Then I had a beer and some late lunch and went out to clean pens.   I turned all the big horse into the pasture part and shut the gate behind them so I could leave the pen gate open.

I didn't count took around a dozen tractor buckets out of Sadie's pen she shares with Razz and Lady.  Had to take a hydration break after a couple hours and then got back to it.   I still had an hour of daylight left but was tired so I quit working on that project.  I'm bummed that I didn't get to Shade and Grey's pen, but I will just avoid feeding them in the really squelch spot, must call dad and tell him also not to feed them there for a while and that the hay in the one cart should not be fed to Sadie.  It is dusty and I'm not going to risk it being mold dust and kicking up her skin allergies.

As I was cleaning there was a family stopped on the road,  mom was in in the car and dad and cute wee little girl had walked over to the pasture fence.  The big horses were all in "stranger danger" mode and stayed on the other side of the pasture.  Dad and little girl walk up to Grey and Shade's pen and Mia runs out to bark at them,  stops barking and wags tail when she sees its just a kid and dad but she also hung back about 30 feet from the fence and would not go up to say hi and I don't know what Ole's deal was but he just stayed in the yard chewing on one of his scavenge bones he drags home, I was surprised that he did not go running up to get attention.

Finally they came west up to where Diamond's pen is and Diamond played farm ambassador, coming to the corral fence to see if they'd feed him some grass or something and letting the dad scratch his face.  I was still going nine oh with the tractor at the time and did not watch to see if the little girl got brave enough to pet him too or not, but I was glad Diamond is so friendly.

Sunday after I came in from the outdoor cleaning I ran a couple loads of laundry and cooked up the drumsticks I'd taken out to thaw along with taters and carrots in my pressure cooker while heating up some 'buffalo sauce'   I need to buy some Reds hot sauce for future or maybe just buy completed buffalo sauce.  All we had was some 'Wyoming Habernaro hot sauce'.   It didn't have enough vinegar or something to give a good tang on the tongue stirred in with the butter and honey that a helpful soul on the HQ had recommended.  It was OK, just not quite what I wanted.   I brushed that on the drums and broiled them a couple minutes, turned and a couple more minutes.

  Cleaning up was more time and work than the cooking had been, next time I'll have to spray some 'Pam' on the broiler rack; but I do love how quickly I can get a meal done with that cooker.  These drums were over two years old and there is a bunch more chicken in the freezer that is at two years old so I think I'll want to cook it all with some sort of buffalo sauce.  It wasn't tasty organic chicken to start with.  That's the other great thing with the pressure cooker,  I wasn't smelling that poultry odor while I steamed the drums.

Its supposed to snow all day tomorrow and L must be craving vitamin H so she came out and we rode again this morning.   She had invited B to join us on his paint mare.  Other than dragging with the   DST clock shift stealing an hour it was pretty fun. 

Woot, rode Sadie today, no ouchies after her trim on Thursday

I guess all the moisture from the Wed and Friday snow is helping with soft cushioned.   Only went 4.5 miles but had some fun cantering. 

Friday was a real spring snow.   Starting with drizzling rain in the morning and then turned to wet snow that melted early today.   Trees dripping melting snow feels so spring like to me, I love it.

A personal sign that we are becoming a backwards commie country

My work has a contract with a maintenance company rather than hire janitors and give them the same bennies the spoiled 'scientists' and admins etc get.    Well they must have a locked in contract and supplies are getting more expensive or they have to squeeze supplies to fund their worker insurance or something.  Starting about a week ago the toilet paper went from normal quality to some stuff that wont tear nicely and feels about as soft as printer paper probably would.   I brought in a roll end from home.  Nothing like having to carry T/P for bathroom trips as though I'm in a primitive campground in my 'modern, award winning for energy efficiency/sustainability' work office building.  

Rode 4 miles Friday and 5 this morning

I feel like a slug for sitting all weekend reading, but it was cold and icky outside and I had no ambition to cook or clean.    I have a new SF author I like.  Sarah Hoyt.   So lucky for me that she has been recommended on the HQ book threads, the Amazon book intros did not read like something I would enjoy but I'm totally liking her Shifter series and based on how she writes her characters I think I'll like anything she has written.  The only problem is I've binge read both of the first two shifter books so I feel I need to avoid starting a book of hers unless I'll have a full snowy winter day to just sit and read it. 

Monday it got nice but the day started cold so I did not ride, just came into work slightly early.  I did force myself to go out in the afternoon and jog 1.5 or so miles.  I enjoyed the jogging and my knees and legs generally are not feeling too creaky today so maybe I'll be able to continue 2 or 3 times a week this spring.    I read something about focusing on exhaling when you exercise (on WUWT blog of all places) a few months ago and it really works.  I'm not getting winded with this jogging like I have in the past, still taking plenty of walk breaks but none because I'm gasping for breath.

Reading another historical Roman fiction.  Children of Apollo (eagles and dragons) I enjoyed the first part, but then the author veered into talking about 'the gods' directly vs just the main characters' beliefs in them and this has dampened my interest.  Plus its gone from the young tribune leading his patrol and fighting in a battle to getting called back to Rome and the boring part of him and his wife to be falling in love with each other at first sight, Venus is totally smiling on them yada yada.