Sprayed goats heads this morning

I need to spray again.  I know I have some in the smaller horse pens I mowed a couple days ago and I want to spray some for my wonderful neighbors, I'm sure they have more coming after I last sprayed any over there.   I also should text riding buddies.  Its been so hot, and I haven't wanted to push back yard work to ride in the limited time period when I can bear to do stuff outside so I haven't ridden in almost 3 weeks.  Plus it was stacking hay and then having sis and B here the last 2 weekends.  I could have taken a quick ride at home if I'd felt more ambitious but I didn't want to be rude and go off on a haul out ride for several hours while they were here.  

Well I guess I don't want to spray more weeds today.   I don't know if we will get anything.  "moist Upslope winds may generate heavy rains in the foothills this afternoon"   But we might get a weak rain.  Weeds sprayed this am will hopefully have absorbed enough 2-4-D to die regardless.  I forced myself to go spray this morning because I didn't want to get horribly behind if we had a few days of monsoon rains. 

It is so dry here that a nice slow rain, or even the gully washer predicted for the foothills would be OK, but it seems more likely that this will just make it iffy to haul up to cooler places to ride this weekend.  I may have to suck it up and call it heat training.

I had totally forgotten to factor in the hours to stack hay in shed after getting it home

 Thank goodness I'm not working on proposal and that I didn't try to make any riding plans because I thought I would be working on proposal.   I am down to just 3 bales on the trailer and then the 7 in the pickup bed so it won't be hard to finish getting the hay stacked knocked out today.   It is just going to be difficult to find energy to spray some goats heads and I should do some shopping and start doing some cleaning for sis and her guy showing up on Friday.   Especially since I have mental block on doing shopping and cleaning.  I don't know why I have the block on shopping, it isn't a difficult task, and this year I've actually starting doing a bit of chatting with customers in line or cashiers so it is not like I'm having anxiety over the people interactions.  That is probably just my inner miser, not wanting to spend a blasted cent.   But I have money in the bank so it's stupid to be miserly. 

I do know why I don't like to clean.  The mental energy to put stuff away first is still much more than it should be,  in spite of my efforts on general de-cluttering.  Plus with the pets and dad, it feels like "why bother, they'll make a new mess within a day anyway"   And if I'm 100% honest, I don't feel like expending too much energy prepping for B.   I'll forget to prep or buy something he wants and he'll feel slighted regardless.   In his case it would probably make more sense to just try to come up with a list of "things we could do"   He is bored just hanging out.  

Well that explains not hearing from the PI, we are not submitting the proposal.

Would have been nice to hear that fist thing this morning since the higher ups decided it last night, but at least I emailed and he responded before I spent weekend time on it.  And I agree with the decision, since NOAA is looking for a commercial vendor and doesn't want the data shared.  Well after the last proposal, that some cheap bid company won I'm sure NOAA didn't want the data very available since I heard through the grapevine that it was crappy quality.  But NCAR shares data, period; and it is actually nice to have extra eyes on the product to alert if something is off.   

Now I need to hook up to the flatbed trailer to haul hay.  I was thinking wait for dad but that is stupid, he rides the clutch on that pickup and is hard to direct while backing.  I can probably get it on my own.

I've been working very hard trying to get things ready to submit for a proposal due on Tuesday

 And today I am just over it.  Its been worthwhile effort for learning things and I can apply knowledge to our clocks data streams.   But I haven't heard from the PI person after we had a quick google meeting on Monday.  I sent him an email on Wed because I was having difficulty focusing on what to do first and no response to that.   Today I asked the whole staff if anyone had a program to calc. PWV from RAOBS.  Zero response.  Of course, it is Friday and I swear 50% of people take every Fri. pm if not all day Friday off.  Maybe most of them put it on their timecards, but it isn't noted on the group calendar.   Oh but we are all oh soooo stressed by having to WFH these last months.  I suppose I should allow that the extroverts are stressed and by Friday they may feel the need to go out and mingle with people, at least by shopping but it just sucks when I'm trying to get things done or get things set up for a computer to run some batch job over the weekend and need some help with something to work efficiently or sometimes to be able to work at all.  And work opened up to 30% starting this month so people who really want to see co-workers in person have the chance now.  No wonder they are talking about making working in office mandatory 2 or 3 days a week.  They must need a way to force some of the layabouts to get back to working a real work week.  

Of course this is if they don't revert back to "only essentials can be in office" as the "delta covid variant" ramps up.   Thanks to the chronic lying by the FNM, CDC and our state health officials I have no idea if the current covid vaccine does squat against this variant, or if the variant is any worse than normal year flu.  They may just want an excuse for why the economy is crashing thanks to the Democratic socialists pushing all their economy killing crap after cheating their way into power, but the FNM was reporting that some front range county is restoring "wear a mask" rules for indoor shopping etc.   

Oh the FNM/DNC line just now is "surging Delta variant cases are because bitter clingers have resisted getting vaccinated."  I don't believe that.  If states with high vaccination rates are not reporting many cases it is because they aren't testing anymore because "we vaccinated enough people to have herd immunity"  so only the very severe cases are showing up in those states; the cases where people end up in hospital and get tested.   I base this on Japan.  I don't believe the Japanese resist vaccinations, although it is possible they didn't push them for covid because they thought they had stamped it out before it got rampant and they are having a huge surge of Delta variant covid cases (whatever a huge surge is in Japan.)   They are still planning on having the Olympics but they will be strictly a televised/streamed event.  No in person spectators.    The U.S. and world is falling prey to covidism after we thought we had defeated communism.   I'm trying to avoid getting too angst about this.   Christians, and people in general have lived through some truly awful conditions with horrible rulers, I guess history indicates it is a much more natural human condition than what Americans are used to.  

I finally have a few good sized zucchinis.  I fried part of one and had with lunch today.   I haven't done a real grocery shopping trip in 3 weeks or more and was reduced to spam to go with leftover hashbrowns and veggies from Sat supper the last two days for lunch after eating leftover hamburger soup M-W.  I have lots of frozen meat and some frozen veggies in the freezer but I had nothing handy to just heat for a quick lunch.  

Dad felt better Monday when he woke up so I never called or anything

 I suppose I should make myself a checklist or something for at what point do I insist that he seek medical attention.   He wasn't in any extreme distress, I am now thinking maybe he had a touch of food poisoning. I was concerned that he might have covid, he was having an unproductive cough as well as not being able to keep food down.    Well there is a long list of things I should do, this one is probably not going to get attention in the near future since he does go to his docs, and keeps up with his prescriptions and so on.  

I went riding today.  Tanza may have been feeling his bruise from the rock I didn't check and remove at on the 29th the last mile of today's ride.   It was subtle but he didn't feel quite right.  But it was a fun ride overall.  I'll probably put some of the green gel on his back feet Sunday with a bit of wet cotton.  If I were a really good horse person I would do it tonight but I can't summon the energy.  

Sigh. I must suck it up and call dad's insurance 'telehealth' line.

 I hate making phone calls.  I hate dealing with medical shit.  But he needs to get in,  burping all the time is one thing, but not being able to keep food down, that needs to be addressed and he is not going to deal with it himself.  I suppose I should count myself lucky that for normal doc appointments, prescriptions, etc he has been handling everything for himself.   He is only doing the hide under the covers now when feeling crappy, probably scared of what he thinks they might tell him.  

Hmmm, maybe I need to look at the possibility of just taking early retirement

 2-3 hours back from my vacation and I'm already irritated with "tell me what to do", as though my co-workers have  a manual labor job, and the supervisor (which I am NOT even classed as for anyone) has to do all the thinking with them just rote doing what they are told to do.     WTELF?  Where does that lazy mindset even come from?    I suppose a wee bit from the boss having a tendency to micro-manage things but they can get over it and think for themselves.  

My riding vacation veered into learning experience.

Tanza picked up a rock on Tuesday.  I felt he was off but did not jump off and investigate, and I KNEW better than to think that just because I was riding with a vet meant it was ok to just shut my mind off and expect them to tell me if the horse is off,  but I did it anyway.   I am struggling to take it as tough love, rather than obnoxious jerk that they didn't say anything.  But regardless of why, it is a good lesson to me to never never ever rely on people riding with me to help assess anything going on with my horse.  And Tanza is stupidly stoic and just sucked it up when I didn't investigate and remove the rock.   That means I probably need to get a HRM with him and I need to really listen when he gives his subtle complaints that he is tired or something aint quite right.

But he also got race brain on Tuesday so I can't only putter with LDs on him, as I don't want to be riding a horse that is go go go through a technical section where I want him to slow down a bit and really pay attention to the trail.  

Also if the RM does this format next year,  I will probably plan on just riding a couple days, go home for a few days and come back for the second weekend of riding.  Most of the in-state folks did that this year and it wasn't so much fun for me with all the other region folks that knew each other with me not knowing who they were.   

But it was ok.  I hadn't scribed for a vet in over a decade and that was a good refresher and I got to know the ride vet a bit more.  He is really gruff in the vet line.  I now think that this is because he is naturally pretty friendly; so he forces himself to be gruff and abrupt to keep the vet line moving along.  I liked his style.  CRI on every horse, and then pass/fail for other parameters; both vets would mention if guts were quiet, or a horse was a little bit off.