Black Hills trip was mostly mis-adventures. Hopefully filled the yearly quota

I still don't know how well the saddle pad adjustments will work for Tanza cuz I only rode him short walking rides with Dad and Sis.   This is because I was dumb when trying to level my trailer.  FYI, if running trailer wheels up on blocks is not enough to level it; one needs to have the wheels on the ground and chocked before unhitching from p/u.   And never think "oh it will be just a few minutes and we are right here watching" and leave the horse tied too long while getting trailer situated.

So Tanza had some minor bruising of lower front right leg and was w/o his shoe and I opted not to ride him at endurance speeds.   The leg was fine by Monday so that was a good decision.

Saturday was not bad,  we rode a 2-3 mile loop, saw it was looking like rain and decided to go back to camp and get rain coats or wait if it rained.  It started raining when we got back to camp so we untacked the horses and hung out in dad's camper to have a bit of lunch and see if it cleared up.  It rained for 15-20 minutes and then just stayed overcast and drizzled a bit about every 30 minutes so we never did ride anymore that day.

Sunday we went on a longer ride.  Dad got his saddle way off to the side where he fell off twice, once each side.  Second fall he went downhill and wrenched his back.   We were right by a road at that spot but he initially thought he could ride back, but got to hurting so when we crossed a road we got him off Razz and left him to wait for us to come back in a p/u.   I had to talk sis out of going off to get vehicle faster.  I felt like with Dad's balance and hurting back it would be a disaster if Razz and Tanza were even a bit jiggy when she left on Babe; plus I wouldn't be able to get Dad down safely by myself.   She did stay with and it did take both of us to get Dad dismounted w/o dumping him.  Was no problem ponying Razz back to camp and we got Dad in p/u OK.  Offered that we could take him to the clinic to get checked out but he felt it was just wrenched back muscles and I figure he knows his body after 79 years.   Gave him Alleve and SalonPas patched back at camp and got him in his comfy zero gravity chair and he was ok.

Sunday evening I decided I would hook my p/u back up, and put trailer in the access lane since most folks had gone home so we would not be fighting with it Monday morning when we had an 8 hour drive to get home along with getting the rest of camp torn down.   While I was doing that Tanza was scratching his head like a dog and got his leg over his high tie lead rope.  Thank god I have plastic tubing over the lead rope.  He got just a tiny bit of a friction burn, but did not break the skin and seems sound today.  I wrapped it Tuesday to keep the tiny bit of scabbing he was getting even though I didn't see any broken skin down, lest the scabs cause issues and he seems to be trotting sound even in the wrap.    We got the p/u hooked up and then it was time to get it moved.

When the trailer came off the trailer jacks I was using as risers on Friday the tires were jammed between the trailer jacks and the chocks behind the rear wheels.   I was trying to shovel out underneath the jacks and Sis said "use your bottle jacks to raise the back end of the trailer."  That was a great idea.  I got the trailer jacked up and we got all but the one big chock behind the right tire out; then I was able to pull forward and sis was able to use the shovel to dig that chock out.   I got the trailer backed up onto the more level access lane, had some late supper and crawled into bed.

Monday we got everything packed up and on the road at a decent hour and made it home by about 6:30.  I even had time to spray some goatsheads.   Dad was hurting from the long drive but he felt good enough to unpack his fridge yesterday.  

I'm going to have to put CJ and Tanza together for a while

The two redheads are a bit skinny and Razz and Sadie are plenty fat.   So I'll have to put CJ and Tanza together and hope Tanza doesn't get a bit where the saddle pad will rub so I can feed them plenty of hay and give CJ more Eq. Sr than he is getting now and maybe a bit of the Amplify.  Good thing I went to the Buffalo creek ride and got the "body score is a 4" to open my eyes to the gradual weight loss with Tanza and now I looked at CJ and noticed he has dropped weight too.   I don't like my horses being under a 5 but I was just not registering the dropping weight until the vet said Tanza's body score last week at the ride and then I noticed I can see ribs on CJ this weekend.  Sigh, in theory part of the reason to always shove any thought of moving out back in a closet is because I'll notice things and take better care of the horses.   I guess I'm going to have to get a younger roommate with sharp eyes to fill that role for me before too long.

I sprayed about 5 gallons of 2-4-D this weekend.  This is good burr eradication progress,  it took me quite a while each time to walk around and find burrs to spray to use up about 1.3 gallons of spray.  I have to remind myself of this progress because I felt like "uggg, I'm still not doing much but spraying weeds"   I also did some hand weeding of mom's old super over-sized flower bed,  watered the pretty weeds I'm trying to start along the outside of the horse pen and burned some tumbleweeds that got going before dad got his mower belt replaced earlier this summer.  Not bad for as hot as it was.  Not great but not bad.

I also washed a couple loads of clothes, I hauled a huge tote of sweaters that mom had to take to SD to hand off to sis to deal with and also washed some of her clothes on hangers that had gotten so dusty they needed to be washed before wearing or giving away and boxed them up.   It always seems to take a huge toll on my mental/emotional energy stores to deal with "what to give away, throw away etc. and this was no exception.  I added some smaller ls shirts to my wardrobe as I sorted,  decided that I will give bro mom's Broncos Ed McCaffrey jersey,  I forgot she'd even had that or the Brett Favre T-shirt.   Course she didn't wear them often, appreciated them as gifts, but was saving them.  I come by that silliness naturally,  of save something until it spoils (food) or is outdated or no longer fits well etc.  instead of enjoying it and being ok with using it up, wearing it out etc.  Trying to work on this personally.

Tanza did great yesterday but saddle fit not right yet

Argghhh on the fit issues.  If I had confidence it would fix the problem I'd buy a new saddle for him but I don't.   The adjustable fit (with special fit pads) seem to work for a lot of folks but I can't stand the thought of spending that kind of scratch on a saddle where the cheap construction ends up with screws poking the horse if the rider misses a problem and I think the poking screw is not visible with the saddle lining.  I will try shimming my saddle pads to be thinner at the spine to hopefully even up the saddle pressure and if I can't get that right will start looking for a seller/fitter for expert help.

I found out that Tanza has more bottom than I thought.  He was acting tired to start the last loop and then M came riding up on his nice bay horse and Tanza was like "oh I enjoy cruising with Rocky" and was trotting fast and cantering quite a bit and was still in great form at the finish.  If I can get the saddle fit really good so Tanza's back stays comfortable he will be awesome.  It was a hot day yesterday and I was close to done in by the end of the ride.  Did get Tanza back to the trailer with food and water before I had to lay down for a bit.  

I must restock my trailer with snack foods and buy string cheese for the next ride.  Also need to restock my salt and minerals for Tanza and get horse feed.  I'll probably just take 1/2 a bag of Eq Sr instead of packing up buckets since Razz will be along and we'll be about 4 days.

I should water some things today and perhaps I'll get a bit done but my scalp is demanding I shower first and really scrub with some baking soda.  Sky is teasing that it may rain and water things but it usually doesn't amount to a good watering out here.  

Well I did not get to ding management on their reviews

In previous years the standard deal was supervisor's bosses would sent an email to everyone that was supervised by them inviting any comments.  Well this year I guess the new system is to ask X # of people for feedback about everyone who is being reviewed.   I was not in the group of X for either my direct boss or our program team boss and I never saw any "hey you can offer generic feedback on managers" invites.

It is a good overall thing to ask a few people to give answers to focused questions for every person being reviewed.   But its also a nice little dodge for managers that deserved to get some dings since their reviewer can choose *friendlies* to give that feedback versus inviting feedback from everyone who is living under their supervision.

Everyone is about breaking their arms patting themselves on the back for getting the first bits of data processed from our new satellites.   They didn't see fit to mention that the sister agency in Taiwan had the first download analyzed before we got our little configuration issues ironed out; must only magnify their own success as much as possible.

    Its why I love Trump so much.  When he does his pep rally speeches he is always saying how "our military,  our dedicated workers, etc etc have done an amazing job."  This is especially refreshing after the last potus that always spoke "I did x, my plan worked, yada yada"    And I'm not a total fan girl of Trump.  I don't love his speaking style which often seems like trying to sell something.   But Trump is always crediting americans, his voters, the military, etc etc when he is talking about any success instead of trying to claim all glory for any success but can't scapegoat fast enough for any failures like most politicians.

Our neighbors mom died last week.  G and S used to be our neighbors and were great before they moved to AK and rented the place to their daughter and SiL who are also marvelous.   I did not get a card out for them to take with them to funeral in IN.  I've been thinking in terms of writing a card to leave for them when they get back and only thought "oh should send a card to funeral"   Oh well.  I sprayed goatsheads over there this morning.   G used to tell my mom "someday I'm going to tame this yard"   She did get quite a lot of nice trees going.  Getting rid of as many of the nasty burrs as I can is my personal memorial to her feisty but fun and friendly spirit.

 I kind of care less if toad boss(es) are at all put out that I missed meetings today because I didn't manage to fit both things in.   I started with the early morning meeting, joining from home, but they were going over visuals but no one was sharing the ppt or whatever that to the meeting,  only to the display monitor in the conference room, so it was going to be a total waste of time for me to sit at my laptop and only get the audio of them discussing the plots.  

Must keep my resolution

Boss is not making it easy.   But if he was a good boss I wouldn't be trying to do so many things and could work in his little obsession.  Since he has driven so many people to leave and been such a slowpoke to get new people in there is just no way I can possibly humor him, I have got to attend to real priorities.   But I hate conflict and the whole stress of having to fend him off is making me turn to time wasting things like puzzles to get myself to a point where I can work at all.

This too shall pass.  This too shall pass.  I passed my test of being honorable last fall/winter with the incorrect ride results and I will pass this character test as well simply because I need to.  If I let him mis-direct how I spend my time it will put the group in a hole and I'm not going to hurt the group.

If he gets totally psycho about it and fires me that would be him hurting the group not me and I think his boss would probably tell him to grow up and not sabotage the group when we are SO short handed right now.  Anyway some part of me would be happy to be pushed out of this quagmire, but I will stick it out and try to help the group succeed vs quitting because even the bosses are basically good people and I really wouldn't want to hurt all the scientists that have devoted so much time and energy to the mission over the years.

So tired

I'm tired of the liberals and their BS lies on TV and FB.  I'm tired of feeling so behind and stretched too thin at home and wondering how to solve the issue.  I hate the thought of bringing a stranger into the house but we have a big house so trading room and board, or room and board for person + horse would make sense to get another able body to do some of the chores.  Hiring somebody is a crap shoot of finding someone good, still would be a stranger coming onto the place and if I had them do housework coming into the house ,and I think would put a pinch on my budget although I've been lazy about doing a budget the last few months.

I'm tired of the management at work not communicating with me.  I think they don't communicate with the team period; but its possible they do share info orally in the mornings when I am not there.  And Im just tired of the group boss being a toad.  He wants everyone to code in his style which he can't make time to explain and his code structure is overly complicated and hard to follow.  I've never coded in Obj. oriented style but other software people also tell me its hard to follow his code so its not just my lack of training in that way of coding.   It would be OK if he just wanted people to code in python and c, c++,  rather than "follow my cryptic style."   Sigh.  And he won't even hand off the passwords and manual to program our ground rcvrs to the IT team.  

All of that behavior goes with someone who is too insecure to enable his team, but with his resume and skills he should not be insecure.  He can write code, he knows the science quite well, he is good at interacting with the funding folks, the division boss did the same PHD program as him so he knows he has a solid advocate above him.   I need to get with my plan of buttering him up and coaxing that he needs to hand things off because we can't afford for him to give himself a heart attack trying to do the work of 3 people.

Gulp, our orbit scientist is leaving

I knew she would leave in the next year.  I just figured it would more likely not happen until 2-3 months from now and that there would be 4 weeks notice rather than 2 weeks so the handoff of what she developed would not be so rushed.

The good news is that I drove over 450 miles to northern Wyoming and rode 100 miles this weekend.  Tanza did well.  Our pace was slower than what I'd like to be at but I haven't done enough conditioning and on day 1 it was ride with folks who were going to go over 8 mph or stay with the slower group.   Slower group ended up with 6 mph pace, rather than 6.5 to 7 I would have liked.  Oh well.   On Day 2 Tanza stuck with young riders who were doing 8 mph pace on the first loop.  Actually he insisted on passing them towards end of loop.   And then starting loop 2 he was getting tired and as they started out cantering and passed us he was "meh, I don't need to stay with them."   I don't love that our pace slowed down so much that overall ride pace was only 6 mph by the end of the day but he was on day 2 and I have not done enough conditioning miles on him to push him past the pace he was volunteering.  

I enjoyed the weekend overall,  a few minutes here and there of feeling over heated and over tired but I remembered to enjoy being on the trail on my awesome horse most of the time.   Met a gal on my route and had the wonderful blessing of having her drive a good part of the way from where I picked her up on Friday (I only drove 90 miles after her place and she drove the rest which was about 180 miles)  and she drove around 120 miles on Sunday which made things much easier for me.  She also crewed for me a bit on Sunday,  she was hurting from riding on Saturday and just volunteered in camp on Sunday.  

That gave her lots of time to visit with the other folks attending the ride and she had a great weekend and is excited to get into the sport here.   She used to live in upstate New York, moving, having a saddle fit issue that ended up with getting bucked off and a back injury had resulted in her not riding much since moving to WY a couple years ago.  So I helped promote the local rides to a new person, yay me.   She recently got a rescue Akhal Teke horse and one of the gals at the ride is a huge lover and promoter of the AT breed so that was a nice side benefit for S too.