Hurray for good neighbors

And for trying to be one myself.   The neighbor girl that has been riding Lady some came over yesterday.  It was warm but gray skies and wind had been making me feel like I didn't want to be outside.   But with the bump of K's youthful energy I went out.  Had her pull some weeds in the tree bed south of the house while I pulled out old stalks from mom's flower beds that I'm trying to keep enough grass and weeds out that they survive w/o shorting my horse love to become an unpaid groundskeeper in my off work hours.

Then we rode Tanza and Lady in the bigger horse paddock.  I asked K not to let Lady go in her favorite corner because of the tree branches that could poke an eye.  With that, plus I think she processes from last ride and improves even when it has been a couple weeks between rides she was doing quite well with keeping Lady where K wanted to be.   I think they could go down the road with me within 2-3 rides if the progress continues.   Lady does not have an energy leap when she is out of the paddock like many horses do so if there is good control and management of Lady's energy level in the paddock I think they will be fine riding out.

Later I kept on a bit with that energy boost and did some hoeing grass out of the flower bed.  I used the microwave to heat the pulled pork and some frozen veggies for supper.  Dad had the last of leftover mashed taters with his and I had a slice of bread.   I hate the Roman orgy feeling of the 21st century but I do love having convenience foods and the microwave.  If only we could get rid of the outrageous behaviors and cheering of such for status or tribal signaling/flaunting purposes and keep the technological shortcuts life would be really great IMO. 

The candidate for work turned them down.  I suppose they could not offer enough money since he was interested and came for interview and gave a seminar but then declined to accept job and he was higher level than our position before going to east coast and is high level management there.  He wanted to have less management but I imagine their is a pretty high mental barrier to taking much of a pay cut.    So we will have to muddle along w/o getting extra management help.   And we didn't get the contract bid we put in for.   I had a bit of a bad feeling that we were gilding the lily too much, adding extra quarter or more percent of time for 2 or 3 high level people who were not going to have any of that time free from their core projects anyway but I deferred to the management folks who were scared to low bid and end up not covering all expenses for the project.   And we might still have not got low enough to be competitive, as there is no way we would have gone nearly as low as the company that won the bid did. 

Making hay while the sun shines

Not actually putting up hay,  we don't even have any hay fields.  But I've been making it a point to ride each morning this week before heading to work because the forecast is for it to rain or possibly snow all weekend.  

I am blessed with a couple of good horses.   Sadie is weak on the staying sound side but if endurance was out of the picture she is the perfect horse for me, she is so good about going out on short solo dirt road rides and even when she is being rowdy nothing she does feels like its going to fling me to the dirt.

Tanza is coming along.  I think his legs will hold up to as much riding as I get back up to doing and he is getting quite a bit better about relaxing if I take him out by himself and I know he is good in groups, having none of Sadie's angst about being surrounded by other horses.   Yesterday I slapped him out of Lady's feed pan so he had to run around a few minutes before letting me catch him,  oh my is he a pretty mover. 

Take it easy, take it easy

Or maybe its "I don't care anymore,  no more no more no more".   I have been trying too hard and messing up, wanting to make a good impression on the POD hire even when he was just a member of the team.  He was hired before the BOD of the big corporation that manages everything got rid of their stupid Che quoting corporate president hire after letting him agitate for 3 years without being a leader who replaced what he had decided was too old and hidebound.   And things have just been worse since people in our group got bumped into management roles because our excellent director moved up to try to save the midlevel program that we are part of and the corporation as a whole.

So I am resolved to remember that I have savings and quite a bit in the retirement plan and I wouldn't feel like just working as a driver, or even just a cashier etc for ten years or so before started drawing retirement was the end of the world.  I will still try to do a good job, as I don't want to contribute to the group or corporation failing and putting some decent folk coworkers out of a job;  but  *I* dont NEED this job so there is no reason whatsoever for me to go all angst over every inadvertent flub.  If I'm still flubbing at least I maybe won't feel as upset if I haven't tried so hard and probably if I just relax more I'll actually do better.  

And hopefully the group hires the candidate that they had come and give us a seminar last week.  That person has a lot of program management experience and our group is floundering on the management side IMO.   So if they hire this dude and he helps out with the management while getting to do more research which he has zero time to do at his current location it should be win win. 

They were looking for more of a pure researcher at the initial science side initially from what our scientist on the committee told me at lunch but the first choice candidates they would have liked are all happy in current locations and they realized they could use some help on the management side.  And IMO getting a good researcher on the what all can we do with the data/products we are generating could be just as useful to expanding program work long term, and it has more chance of success than pitching a new satellite to funding agencies.  So I'm jingling curb chains for that.