I rode Sadie on Sunday.

Ole was feeling good and tagged along so I went only a 3 mile loop,  Sadie did an extra .5 to 1 mile because I made her double back to where Ole was several times to make sure he was still coming.

CJ the family pack horse is pretty sick.   He has not had normal appetite for 8 or 9 days now.   On the good side he has not completely refused to eat since the first night it started and isn't dropping weight rapidly but he can't go on for too long eating maybe up to one half of his normal intake. 

Since CJ was not really getting better we had Dr Mike out this morning now his Stock Show gig is finished.   He switched from oral doxycycline antibiotic to IM penicillin shots.  He thinks there are 3 possible causes for CJ's malaise.

1.  Colitis which the doxycycline would aggravate.

2.  Internal abscess which the penicillin will fight  same as the doxy would do.

3.  CJ has a tumor and will not get better.

I've had in the back of my mind the thought that CJ might have some chronic, still mild liver disease issue since he had the colic 27 months ago at hunting camp so I am not as grief stricken as I might be.  Also CJ is a good ole horse for the hunting trips but I'm not bonded with him like I am with my ayrabs.   

So we will do the penicillin shots and blood testing and see what is going on.  If its a tumor and he doesn't get his appetite back we'll have to put him down before he gets very far down the starving on his feet path.  We won't try heroic measures,  he is getting a fair amount of $$ of treatment just with giving him basic treatment in case he just has an issue that can be fixed with standard care.  

The weather has been beautiful these last 2 mornings but I've been distracted with CJ and work and have not taken advantage and gotten on Sadie or Tanza. 

I've been reading a biography of Count Belasarius.  It was written in 1938 so I think before the PC era.  Its an interesting peek into the influence the fading Roman empire had on the early church but not a whole lot of fun action of Belasarius as a military commander so far.  Its good for not being so interesting that I don't want to set the kindle down and go do stuff but readable and I feel like I'm learning a bit.

Oh and just today work and my credit union emailed links to get my W2 info and interest earnings.  I don't think I have the oil royalty statement yet.   So I am not going to get taxes done by Jan 31.  I don't think the royalty income is enough that I needed to send in any quarterly payments or incur a penalty --if I'm wrong then I'll be paying penalty for 4th quarter as well since not going to get taxes done by end of month.

I'm not biting my fingernails worrying about getting bills paid and have been feeling so generally blegh that I just do not care enough to try to shoehorn the taxes in in the next few days even if it might result in giving EarLeader and his IRS and EPA thugs a little extra money.  

Well work is OK lately ...

I've been wimping out about riding.  Its not totally a cop out because the yard still has icy patches and the horse pens still have snow so the field roads probably would too.  But if I had really wanted to ride it was not  unsafe for sane horses and I do put Sadie in the pretty sane category now.

But the weather has not been enticing and I just haven't felt deprived of vitamin H yet.   What I want is a vacation from sharing house with dad.  But I'm not going to go through all the work of finding a new place to live while feeling guilty every step for leaving him lonely.    Bummer that they moved the MRER convention to the bigger hotel last year and are keeping that again this year.   If it was the small hotel they used to use where MRER was the only group that would feel like a getaway but being in the big hotel with groups doing recreational marijuana vacations would be even yuckier to me than the stuffy house.    So I should get riding and haul out to some rides in Utah this spring.

Work has seemed pretty decent lately.  I've been getting a few important things done.  The new orbital scientist hire is giving me good suggestions and having him around is making me up my game.

why doesn't this bloody code option work?

I'm fairly certain I ran it before,  I must have had some thing that I think should not matter set differently.   So frustrating.  I'm ready to bag it and just write a perl script to do what the subroutine in the software package is supposed to do but is refusing to cooperate.  In fact I'm fairly certain that that is what I will end up doing, I just have to work myself up to doing it.

I haven't been on a horse in over two weeks and am feeling the cabin fever.  Trudging around on slick snow pack to feed just doesn't cut it for outdoor/vitamin H time for me.

I should have made a resolution to try to be more organized this year.  I'm wasting so much time by not knowing where or even if I documented what I did two months ago,  searching for crap that I'm not even certain I didn't toss etc.

The beltway republicans are siding with EarLeader to kill off the last vestiges of proper, lawful Republic instead of trying to stop him.   If Palin or someone announces a new party next election cycle I'm jumping in with them.  Either we get real change or the country crumbles just a bit faster when the Dems speed the decay again but the GOPe keeps promising to fight the problem and then at most they  reduce the acceleration towards ruin but they make no attempt to turn or actually hit brakes or anything.  If things crash faster there may be more chance of knowledge of how the ideal worked surviving and I'm just tired of being a pawn while both sides grow government power and reduce individual freedoms.

GAAAH

I did nothing yesterday.  Not even read a chapter in a book.   Just zoned out playing stupid # jigsaw puzzle (sudoko) and a bit of web browsing, mostly just reading what other people were doing and watching myth busters marathon when Dad had that on.   I'm not superstitious that what I did on Jan 1 influences the whole year but I don't have all that much time on my hands.  I should have cleaned, installed curtain rod,  addressed some greeting cards .... something.

We got shocking and depressing news that Dad's good friend of 20 years or more that he met when trucking at Leprino passed away.   I can't blame that for my sluggishness  though, because I hadn't done one thing in the 5 or 6 hours before that call.  

I came into work today.   Lots of empty offices as folks took PTO to get 4-day weekends or maybe 10 day blocks with Christmas.  I did not get much work accomplished,  frustrations abounding with programs mysteriously deleted from the processing CPU,  and then I have forgotten -- again, how to recompile our code.  You have to remember a hidden directory to put code edit patches in and I always forget the path.  I couldn't even find it in history and it was not only not showing up today but when I was trying list commands on the parent directory it was freezing the terminal window.  Very frustrating and the freezing windows was a new wrinkle.

I did some end of year donations on Monday or Tuesday but was going to do more and forgot.  I probably wouldn't have itemized deductions this year anyway so I can just give more next year and make any needed adjustment.  I don't attend a church so I try to hit about 10% in donations to various outfits instead but I tend to come out low.  This year I was definitely way under as far as IRS deductible stuff went but I gave some $ directly to a friend that runs a an animal rescue because she had vehicle break downs hit.   Possibly I could have done that thru the rescue,  she uses her vehicle(s) for the rescue and has used personal funds to make ends meet to feed the critters and stuff. But since I usually don't itemize anyway why risk an IRS hassle.   I'm probably still low, but I've been too lazy to  try to compile my various donations.  

I need to do some shopping for sister.  I feel lame, all I got her for Xmas was socks and 1 pr of wool long johns and I didn't even arrange gift wrapping or anything.  

She sent us some homemade carmel-corn and snack mixes with popcorn.  I managed not to break a tooth on any of the old maid kernels so yay me.  Yah, glass houses and throwing rocks big time but I'm a bit like "gee thanks for going the extra mile of putting the popcorn in a bowl and lifting out only the popped kernels before adding the syrup and making it easy to miss and bite down hard on the old maids"   She also sent me wool long johns  and some nice Avons lotions in handy sizes for packing (LOL on us sending each other the same thing and I believe neither of us requested long johns.)   I was borrowing her lotion hunting so I guess she thought I needed some travel packs.