Christmas in the books.

 Dad seemed pleased enough with his waffle iron.   I was going to get him some humorous books but never got around to it.  Kind of feel like I don't *need* to buy him stuff since I do the cooking and cleaning.   Not that I keep the place spic and span but still I spend plenty of time to keep it bearable. 

I baked a 10 lb Sugarland ham.   Quite liked it.  It was not as watery as a lot of hams are, enough drippings to make gravy though.   And just did instant mashed taters.  They came out better than the ones I made from scratch on Thanksgiving and got too watery.  It is nice to have a palate that likes easy foods just fine and Dad likes the instant packets fine too.  I think these Idahoan packets are way way better than the old boxes of instant taters used to be.   I have 4 hunks of ham vacuum sealed and a the bony hunk in a big ziplock, not vac sealed for ham and bean soup.  I'm get this weird joy from getting lots of meals out the holiday turkey and hams.   I don't NEED to be so frugal.  But eating cheaply makes it easy or easier to not worry about cost of the farrier or cost of fuel to haul to a ride for fun.  

I rode Tanza yesterday before baking the ham.   I hadn't been on him in 3 weeks.   Someone was target shooting and he got all angst about he noise so I turned around, then had to keep telling him "I turned around but you don't need to or get to bolt"  Lots of  forced laughing to keep breathing and get through that instead of feeding his goofiness.   Then when I was going down the section road the wind started gusting a bit so I cut the ride short, but it was a nice bit of saddle time before cooking.  

Hopefully when I get back to riding more regularly I can insist that we do not make a big deal out of someone enjoying their Boomstick toys.  I don't need Tanza to be mounted shooting tolerant but he doesn't need to get silly because of someone 100 yards or more off doing some plinking.   

Oh Yay I may have broken the vacuum cleaner.

 Was being so good and emptied it out so it would not overfill and cause it to overheat,  and Forgot to put the filter cone on.  I blew crap out of it with air hose and will see if it will start after it cools off.  Trying to keep perspective.  Vacuums are plentiful and relatively cheap and we even have another functioning one upstairs but I  feel like bawling.   This was supposed to be:   Do some cleanup and then maybe do the Christmas decorating.    Of course cleanup was mainly washing covers from Dad's recliner and then a load of jeans because he has lost so much muscle in his legs that the disposable underwear don't catch everything,  yuck, and he won't rotate to clean jeans even after I bought him 3 pairs for his b-day,  I have to either wash em or at least throw in the hamper myself when I feel like I need to force him to use a clean pair.   I guess biology kills your sense of smell as you age so you aren't so grossed out by your own emissions you kill yourself.  

Thank heavens I bought an ozone generator in early 2020 when the stores were constantly having runs on bleach and cleaning supplies.   I don't know how effective ozone is to kill viruses but it certainly does help with odors.  I bought a second one this fall, so I can run for 20 minutes in my bathroom when my morning constitutional stinks it up and so I have a hot spare in case the one in the downstairs bathroom/laundry room breaks.   I will never build a house with that stupid combo, but haven't go to point of spending tens of thousands to add a bathroom or split the space etc in this 70s house.  I am no longer in germaphobe mode at all, but it sure is nice to have the odor killing machine.  If it was not dangerous to run with people present I'd probably move it around and run it several hours a day.   

p.s.   The vacuum cleaner is alive.   I only put it on for a few seconds so don't know if it is going to have an issue with quickly overheating from the crap the filter was not there to catch.   I got decorations down from the attic.  Proved to myself that I didn't need an extra body to do this.  I put a few of my usual mini lights along the fence.  Will put more up tomorrow.  I suppose I'll put the tree up tonight.  Not right now with the FNM program blabbing.   

Rode Tanzaknight today.

 He is getting pretty good at home about standing for me to get on.  I've been working on not being impatient myself and having him stand for several seconds after I'm set and then he gets a cookie before I ask him to walk off.  I've been doing a lot of forced laughing when I ride to keep relaxed when he is being the double speed energizer bunny.   Bee is in good weigh so I can and probably should cut back even a bit more on their feed than what they are on right now.   I'm tending to overfeed Tanza because he got too thin  for my tastes a couple times when he was younger.  But I really don't need him to be having tons of excess energy from getting more concentrates than he needs.  

The senior software engineer is having a cow because I copied old version of code he modified because the mod doesn't work with one specialized mission.   Well whatever,  if he wants to force the new code to work (I think to skip the one code function that fails for it he can.  I didn't want to mess with it on a weekend morning.  

I am late to feed the horses and get ready for bed.  Sometimes I am tired but can't seem to break away from the computer chair.  I am so weird.