Meeting for a ride date on Saturday. YAY

Hope I am not jinxing by writing about anticipated event but I feel like I sooo need this.  My week has been high stress.  Ended last week with a 6 mile ride on Tanza,  I was hot and didn't want to go more,  he was barely settled down yet but he was pretty well behaved.   I am trying to work more on standing to mount and he did well before the ride started.   Meh when I got off and walked him past the scary grove of trees going out.   He was brave enough to go by the grove with me mounted on way home.

Then Sunday.  I pulled some weeds and sprayed some goat head burrs, was thinking I should ride Tanza again or maybe Sadie but was not moving to get that done,  then noticed flies were buzzing around Mia where she had had some urine and feces in her long hair.   Dad was late scheduling her to get clipped this year.  Well we did have some late snowstorms so semi-understandable.

 I decided I needed to spot wash some dirty patches on her to clip easier with the scissors and had to get dad to hold her so I could rinse better after starting that.  And then total gross-out,  I cut off a bit of matted fur in one spot and found tiny maggots.   So I grabbed my Endure brand horse fly spray and sprayed,  scissored more, sprayed, scissored, repeat cycle until there was a good clear margin around where the maggots had been and I found probably the initial wound where the flies had laid eggs and cleaned it.   Told dad that unless the groomer could take her by Tuesday he needed to run to town and buy some flea shampoo.

Home:

Monday.   Sprayed goat heads before work.
Tuesday.  A nice cool day that would have been great for a morning ride before work but the groomers have no opening until Monday so Mia gets a bath and clipping session before work, after I had watered my mini garden.  Wishing I had resisted the urge to plant a few things.
Wednesday:  Sprayed weeds.
Thursday:  Had to leave early for a seminar my co-worker gave.  I was over 10 minutes late. Blah.  Mia's attacked patch of skin is looking less raw.  I sprayed some more Endure on the problem section because flies were buzzing around a bit but overall it was reassuring return to pink from red, irritated skin.
Friday:  I should spray more goat heads but the three sessions so far this week have made a good dent.

In just two weeks is the wrap up of what has been my favorite ride to go to and I am going to try to do 3 days of 55s on Tanza.  Just like entering the BH 50 last year it will be "Well we are going to try it, if he gets tired we will drop out, rather than trying to force things"

Work:  I am not coping real well with being the one dealing with the lazy SE who is always smarmy at meetings where the boss is present promising he can do this or that and then delivers nothing or something very half assed and always tries to get someone else to finish up the details on building or integrating into packages when he codes up a bit new software.  Drives me crazy that the #@!! *senior* SE, now officially *research* engineer and not part of the core team, thank g-d,  passes off that real software engineering step.  What a lazy cad,  he should  learn the building system (which is pretty nice thanks to the younger great SE) and make it even easier if he finds it still a bit tedious, but lazy cad, he didn't do it before and surely won't now when his role has been changed.    Something I told the bosses they should do last fall because we might lose the great younger S.E.s .  Plus things had to change from lazy cad being on the team to fully free anyone to innovate.   A minor miracle, they acted on that advice.  Slowly and cautiously, seeking confirmation from other folk(s) on the team  first but the change did happen.

We are interviewing for a new SE, mainly because the one jr S.E. was burned out and went to P/T to take some online course(s) and demanded being allowed to innovate vs managing the old system even when he goes back to FT.   It was good that he did this because it forced a brain transfer to other folks of how to do most of the SE maintenance tasks, which had been slow rolling before because jr is a great SE but not very adept at training others.

   The process is a time drain and I feel like I'm not adding that much to the hiring committee but of 3 folks we decided to interview in person, the first we would be fine with hiring,  the 2nd failed (I had to sleep on it before I was as much no way as the others- but I was not going to buck their judgement anyway)  and we have one more interview on Friday.  With luck we will have two choices we would be fine with to present to the boss.  

Before that interview I have my performance review.  I am not dreading that this year like I often have in the past.  Partly because I'm getting so sick of the lazy guy and working with idiot liberals who don't understand that funding is tight because commie Barry choked the U.S. economy for 8 years that I don't think I would mourn deeply if I was laid off (red tape means you don't get fired for cause easily, even if you are being let go because your work sucks,  they eliminate your position for 6-12 months and then open a new position for a new hire).   Plus right now I am an important bridge between the old methods put in place by lazy SE and knowing the specialized outside S/W package we use until the young guns on the team can build the replacement(s) so I'm probably fine for the next year or two since new constellation launches in about 10 months.