I never heard if the HOF committee even got my email

So,  I'll be in as much suspense at the banquet as everyone else which is cool.   They probably got a set of last minute nominations including horses that are totally not on my radar and S's owner posted something about more to come with him on her FB feed so its quite likely he'll have to wait.  It used to be an unwritten rule that only retired horses were eligible but they have awarded to at least one active horse so I'll just have to wonder what horse might get it this year.

Sister FB messaged me this morning that they will probably come Thursday night from Hotchkiss, seeing B's dad first.  So I should suck it up to do the housecleaning and I will definitely not take the xmas lights down yet.   I was thinking they had decided they were just too busy to come since I had not heard from them and I could punt on the cleaning until a cold snowy day.  Well they'll suck it up if the house is not perfect but I'll get a few indirect comments about its crappy state.

Sure hope I don't get the bug that has been going around.  Last night I felt like I might be getting sick, my eyes felt itchy.  When I went to bed if was just the one that is always red -- I think I have a leaking blood vessel but its only on the white.  First time that happened I went in right away JIC it was an issue and the nurse and optometrist were nearly laughing at me as a hypochondriac.  I am overdue for the routine eye screening now, so I should call and see if I am still on the insurance or not.  I am going to be pissed with HR and our admins if I got bumped to  the high deductible plan because I didn't fill out the new workday form because they sure did not send out warnings and with the previous system if you didn't fill anything out you kept your last year's plan which is what I wanted.  I didn't set out to blow off filling out the form, which they did notify everybody 'needed to do' but our group ended up super busy that week and I ended up at 10pm on the deadline day going "oh I am so tired and this should be OK w/o me wrestling with this PITA system."  

Equine dentist is coming on Thursday.

I'm relieved he scheduled so quickly after I finally got him called.  It will be a great relief to taper Bee off the extra concentrates as I have a fear of giving him laminitis.  Now I just have to get myself scheduled for eye exam, dentist and routine health screenings I've been punting on for too long, but baby steps in the right direction are still steps in the right direction.

I may need to take a break from FB.  So tired of reading people who are done riding seriously whining that AERC shouldn't co-sanction 100 mile rides with FEI.   And a lot of the whiners  also whine that AERC doesn't give RMs ENOUGH control of their own rides as far as fudging distance if the ride is over tough terrain.  What a sorry group of people, they probably don't even have a clue how wildly inconsistent they are being.   I am with the 2nd group to a fair extent, but I feel kind of bad if a ride seemed significantly short.  Would be nice if AERC would just give the RM more leeway to adjust time to complete and sanction rides for 45 miles if RM requested it.  Then everyone that loves that scenic ride but wants to have 12 hours to finish it could still be happy (well some would still carp that 'this ride is tough so we should get a 10% add on on the mileage' for yearly records.)

I nominated for regional awards Partners the end of Dec, and yesterday the award organizer said on FJ "we received no nominations for HOF either person or horse" so extending the deadline to Jan 15. So I had some fun looking through some ride records, initially I was looking at a horse I nominated last year but the rider/owner while a nice guy doesn't come to convention so I was pondering and then  thought "how about Stu?"  Had some fun noting highlights of his career which is pretty awesome, he misses only the 3000 or more miles highlight but awesome little horse with 11 100 mile completions 5 of them on tough courses.  

I can think of some possible HOF people too, but for the one candidate I'd need to reach out to some folks for details of their riding career(s) before they became solid RMs as the online records don't go back that far.

Great start to the New Year

WooHoo. the tree trimmer came on Jan 1 and Jan 2.    The dead trees are not down to short stumps but they are not a threat to outbuildings or vehicles.  The neglected live trees that I had them trim up look awesome.   Wednesday I took some black plastic from the garden shed and spread where I still needed weed block along the Russian Olives and used bark from the cut trees to put over the plastic.  Today I asked them to put the mulch from the chipping they do in the back yard where mom had tried to start a mini orchard but the plum and apple trees died.

While they were cutting I cleaned out a big box of garden odds and ends with a couple boxes in it and put those and some other boxes in the shed down.   Then I spread  a few inches of the mulch over the boxes after they dumped the mulch.   Its an ibuprofen evening and I'll take an Alleve tonight but definitely moved the ball on the de-cluttering efforts.   Now I must work on contacting the equine dentist and catching up my dental, eye doc and health screenings.

The Holiday turkey is not consumed but I made my pot pie and rice casserole and soup last night.  I'll freeze up leftovers this weekend.  Not too bad.  I never did make haystack cookies that I thought I might do for the holidays, but I can make em anytime.