Sigh, I have got to quit wasting M's time

At least I finally realized I am doing it but I feel like a leech after realizing I am initiating so many talks with her to relieve my stress about current events at work.   I dislike people who waste other people's time while avoiding work and I hate that I was doing that.  Not like the one former person who would spend 30 minutes to explain some 45 minute task to get out of just doing it himself but using M as an unpaid therapist is very bad form too.   I resolve to shut up and do my job the rest of the week and be much more mindful of her valuable time going forward.

I have been so tired since getting back from the riding trip.  I'm probably still not caught up from the shorter nights and interrupted sleeping but I should be mostly there and it is making me crazy that I cannot summon the energy to spray weeds, ride my goofy little mare etc at home and am just dragging at work and casting about for very easy tasks and avoiding anything that requires much focus.   I was wasting time reviewing resumes, thinking we will hire 2 people since J is quitting but M doesn't seem to think we will.   I guess I will ask our boss.   Since boss wants to replace the clunky old processing set-up I had been thinking we will need another new hire with J quitting but I did leap to that assumption.

Back from the last Shamrock

I did not pioneer.   Thinking back I probably would not have pioneered on Shade several years ago if I had not started riding with someone who helped me through the first day and I didn't want to bail on her and her horse she was trying to get to 5000 miles when day 3 rolled around and I was tired and figured Shade was too.  Well I did not have that mental crutch this year.  What I did have was a young horse that I have not done a lot of legging up on who was mentally tired and doing some stumbling on day 2.  Plus I was hot and tired and being a crabby beeyotch to my sister who was helping me some after finishing the fun rides with my dad.   So I decided I would drop down and do the fun ride with dad and sis on day 3 rather than enduring.   It WAS a lot of fun and I have a sound horse that is stronger than before the ride for the rest of the ride season.    The RM let us stay overnight on Monday after a bit of "well I don't know, no one does that" talk on Sunday.   So on Monday I pulled some flags (others had mostly pulled that loop so it was easy duty) and dad and sis rode on their own. I had skipped one section I thought the guy on the ATV would get and sis went back with me after their ride and we got that cleaned up and Monday night dad grilled bison steaks for supper and they came out yummy.

Tanza on day two early in the day.

And then on Tuesday after driving back from the lovely 5.5 day break, reality came crashing back.  I looked at work emails and one of our great younger SEs is quitting with short notice.  I had thought he might leave, but I had hoped he was going to stick out the year, give a longish notice and help train the new SE hire that was intended to relieve him of the routine, nuisance duties and let him expand his skills, while helping us for the future.   Oh well,  he has to put his health and family first and if staying here was still stressing his health and the relationship with his wife even after the very late in coming changes that had been made, we will survive.   I am reviewing resumes that came in after we closed the first position and the ones we passed on before to see if there are strong programming candidates.  If we have a good set, hopefully we can have only a short period for the announced new position and get a second someone interviewed and hired more quickly.   None of us that are still on the team want upper management suggesting we make the PITA, so not a team player, guy a real part of the team again.  He has tasks he is doing for us, writing codes for reading in and translating the binary satellite data we will get, but we need him out of the team so the smart folks can modernize the processing architecture.    I have *extra* job security the next couple of years now.  Before, I was filling the role of the debugger for that kludgey old system because J was burned out; now he will be gone so it will be Maggie for the legacy web stuff and mainly me for the other legacy stuff with whinging to the office of the PITA if I get stuck on debugging something.    Not hugely fun, but it will buy hay and fuel to go to rides. 

We had Mia euthanized the Monday before we left for the ride.  Her skin was recovering from the maggots but after the groomer clipped her it was clear that she was getting to be skin and bones.  I cooked up some old pork roast for her, but she was leaking fluid into her tummy area and couldn't eat much or she'd feel crappy and it was clear that her guts were just not working right anymore.   I dug her grave mostly over the weekend before we took her in and just went in very late to work that day.

Dad is probably going to bring home a Sharpei cross dog.  I was not enthused last night because it sounded like a good chance of it being a roamer like Ole was when he was younger but Dad likes it and since he is home all the time it will probably be OK.  I do know some tricks I learned with Ole if the dog will not stick around even with people outside with it.  I also showed dad a bio of a 5 yr old Rottie at a rescue in Evergreen that I like, at least on paper.  I said we could maybe get both dogs since they both like to play with other dogs but whatever will be will be. 

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.

Back from Wyoming Ride

Tanza did a nice job on the 50.   I got to ride with Crockett.   He was riding at a modest pace.  We finished in 8 hours of riding time.   I was wanting to be no faster than 7 hours but hopefully not slower than 8 hours so that was perfect.  I want to write it up more but am dragging ass tired tonight.  Tried to do the LD on Sadie on Sunday and she was lame :(   She was off and on lame a good part of the first loop, the vet did not catch it at the hold but when I asked him to watch her at the end of the hold she was definitely off.   She seemed fine trotting in paddock after getting home today so hopefully she remains OK for light pleasure riding.    She rode like a broke horse so that was a relief after she was so snotty at Shamrock and Buffalo Creek last year.  

I may buy another horse.  The family I have hauled some took over board on a horse whose owner passed away, the horse and J have a bond with each other.   If the state or owners family/estate need the horse to be sold to settle the estate I have said I will buy him.  I will only do so if I have a contract for the family to adopt him the next day though; I am not volunteering to take this one home to feed every winter.   That is OK for Lady since I own her and am happy to just get her messed with and fed by someone else during the summer but I don't want to become an un-official rescue.

Hopefully they can contact the estate and either just be given the horse by the estate or work out a sales agreement.   It seems that Colorado law insists that horses be sold at auction if a landowner wants to sell to collect unpaid board, from what someone posted on FB recently or if a horse would be considered abandoned the brand inspector takes it to auction.     Writing a check to buy the horse would be easy, it will suck if I have to haul him home from an auction and especially if I have to go bid on him in person rather than just doing a check or cc over the phone after the family or a proxy of theirs did the actual bidding.  

Not a bad ride conditioning weekend.

I started Tanza on Redmond stress relief formula about 10 days before and he was better about eating his mashes.   I still felt like he wasn't drinking like he should.  It was pretty hot for this early in the year.   But Tanza went out in the lake and splashed and splashed but didn't try to lay down and was pretty well behaved by my standards.    By the NATRC and ranch people standards I am the worst horseman in the world since he did a bit of going sideways at times and I let him walk off when I am mounting.   Coming in from the only 18 rather than 25 expected miles I felt like Tanza and I should go back out but back in camp I was feeling overheated and no one else was going to ride anymore. But overall I think the weekend was useful to help get us stronger for my Shamrock goal and that is what matters to me.

I had no propane.   Apparently last trip when I thought I diligently turned off the propane what I really did was crank it as wide open as possible.   I need to get indicators for those there are ones that are portable and then make a point to always get a new full tank as soon as one is emptied.   Hate when I have those moments of gas-lighting myself.  

Survived first ride of the season

Tanza was less interested in eating alfalfa hay or his mashes then he is at home.   Arghhhh.  But he got through the ride.    Was not drinking the first loop, but drank at the vet check and was interested in hay at the vet check.   He was dragging as we started the second loop, but did let me push him through and then got strong when he felt the pull of going back to the camp.

I was so tired after the ride.  We both needed to be doing only the LD, as we are not in shape to handle more yet.   The ride had a good turnout, delicious food  and the ride picture turned out well.

I found out that wearing loose full seat breeches does NOT work.   The wrinkles were chafing me.  Yay for in camp vet checks so I was able to change to something that stopped inflicting the damage.

I need to be syringing apple sauce into Tanza daily, he is so stupidly angst about getting syringed and if he is not going to eat mashes reliably, where I can know he is getting e-lytes that way he will have to be syringed.  

Still need to pack and hook up to big trailer by Friday morning

But if feels like I got a fair amount of stuff done with weekend.   It was a rough start with adjusting to Invisalign retainers that came in on Thursday.   I am still adjusting to them but it is getting easier as I decide what I can eat and drink with them in.  Supposed to "only drink water" with them in but if I did that I'd get nowhere near to the supposed to wear them 22 hours/day number because I sip a lot of tea and coffee during the course of a day.   And I can let chocolate melt in my mouth with them in.

I had a riding date set up but the gal canceled, messaged me that she was coming down with flu.  So Tanzaknight only went 7 miles at home.   That will have to be enough, should be OK if I ride slow next weekend at the WY ride.

Today I rode Sadie and we got sleeted on.  She held it together so it was a good thing of proving to me she can be sane even under icky conditions.   It only sleeted for maybe 30 minutes, 20-25 that I was out in it though.  Then it got very very windy so I did some spring cleaning laundry, washing up a lot of bedding from the guest room that was Ole's bed rather than a guest bed for the last several months of his life.   I also put the new foam I bought on my air mattress, replacing the top foam that came with it.   I think the new foam will work out well, but keeping the old topper handy for a while.  If I decide the new topper is a permanent change then I will cut a pillow or 2 out of the old topper and then put it in my horse trailer to make that mattress cushier.

Made buffalo rib steaks for supper tonight.   They were less than 1" I think and got to temperature to quickly I get them a bit more done then I intended but thanks to the thermometer I didn't get them way too done and they were tender enough and tasted fine.  I put some garlic and dill on the peas and carrots to go with as a bit of a change up from just salt, pepper and margarine,  thought that worked OK.