No rest for the weary

 I feel unloved because the gang has not invited me to ride since I had to cancel on the morning of May 16th.  I did not ask if they were riding this weekend because I have an infection in my right eye and didn't know if I should drive a trailer up to IC, p/u and trailer are not easy for pulling off to side of road to put in eye drops if eye starts burning and watering so much my driving vision is impaired.   But Friday and Saturday the eye did not get too sore so I would have gone for it if I had been invited.  Perhaps my guardian angel was looking out for me.   But I feel like they don't really enjoy my riding company and I don't know why that would be.  I try to be good riding company, no whining about speed or route, rotate leading and following no "MY horse HAS to be in front", Tanza never kicks, he is pretty good to keep a decent distance behind when not leading, yada yada.  He does do a bit of spooking but it's not so violent it sets this groups' steady horses off.   

Which would leave me.  I do struggle a bit to be on time for early rides but I have made a big effort with these folks and have not come straggling in 20-30  minutes after the agreed meeting time more than once or twice.  I'm not happy home-maker to bring stuff to 'Happy Hour' but I started bringing beer this year to make up for that.  Maybe they think I am just not interested/ am too busy.  I AM busy this year but I want some 2/3 day breaks to keep sane.  I hate feeling like I am always begging to join in and they only let me because they are too softy to say no, but I guess I'll have to ask them because they are not asking me.  I asked my boss for a 'promotion' and he said he was on board but the org would issue guidelines in July.  I think they need me enough to cough up the extra money I requested because our setup is complicated and it takes months for new hires to learn it and be able to really cover things; but I don't 100% trust management on this. 

Last weekend the weather was unsettled so I didn't even ride at home.  Dad ran the tractor so I didn't have to move and lift hay by hand to move the last of the hay from the west side hay shed to the east side so that hay wouldn't sit for 2 years before we got to it again to feed and I got that project done.   I have the shed 95% raked out and just need to put 1 more set of 2by4s down to keep the stacked hay off the dirt and old hay that wouldn't rake up so that is good.   I got two new hinges on my trailer tack door and did a bunch of weeding in the neglected flower beds.  I am going to cover the beds with plastic this fall as soon as the flowers are done and hopefully set the grass back if not kill it.   I have to drill holes and install one more new hinge on my tack door.  I also want to put hinged latch plate and loop on the other side to have backup to the regular door latch to make sure the door doesn't pop open.  Aways expanding projects.  

So much for riding with the gang today

 Tanza would not be caught this morning.   Sighhhh.   I've been mildly concerned that something aint quite right with him because he has not been noshing after riding when trailering out.  Switched him back to eq. senior feed in case the strategy was too much starch and not enough fiber.   Made a point to put his salt, clay and minerals in his morning feed this am.    Do not get to find out if this would have resulted in better after ride eating at a trailhead today because he would not be caught.  I will ride him here on the flat dirt roads in a bit.   I will have to get the corral panels up to get back to having a feeding pen for him so he doesn't have so much room to run around working himself up.  Of course if he is too wound up he won't even go into feeding pen but hopefully if I restore the habit of 'you get fed in here' that will sufficient.  He may also start spending the night in a small pen and run when I want to trailer out in the mornings.   He doesn't get to dictate whether we ride or not.   That is not a path I want to go down.   I hate wondering if there is a tummy upset or saddle is uncomfortable for him etc when he gets hard to catch, but it seems more like he just gets into a high energy mode and can't relax and let me do my thing.  But that can also be  a symptom of ulcers.   Not sure if I should try to do the 50 this saturday now.   I'll know better if I get a good ride on him today. 

Got electric fence working yesterday. Let horses out on pasture today

 Dad was right,  the wire was grounded.  I thought I had tested with the gate handle off but I guess not.   My engineer brain,  oh, right, since I was testing by touching it, and skin has some impedance I suppose the electricity was just going to where it was grounded instead.   Anyway, I need to file in the memory bank that a grounded fence wire may not bite even when the ground is after the point where touching it.

I got the tractor out and moved some of the slop away from the fence line in Tanza's pen.   The tractor was spinning out quite a bit in the slick gunk so progress on clearing was slowed.  Tomorrow I will try to get some done in the other pen I think.  Dad did some mowing YAY!   I hate mowing.  Hopefully he gets the yard done while the weather is mild before it gets too hot for him.   

I have got to quit dinking with the work temperature jump issue.   The software that estimates temp from bending angle and NWM data is not right IMO.   The bending angle does have a teeny bias now vs before but its freaking tiny and the weather centers have been using this 'now biased' bending angle for 6 months and no complaints,  so I think the scientist that wrote our temp estimation will have to solve the issue w/o us reverting the bending angle software  back.  But I'm not in charge so who knows.   It does seem less sensitive when using the higher resolution WM, but another scientist is looking at that.  I am supposed to fix to software that does the WM profiles.   Doug Bug.  Those profiles should be on the WM pressure levels but they are not, they are interpolated to the closest height of the BA or something like that.  On the high resolution model that I would most like to get corrected since we'll probably just use that as input the process to find the points to interpolate through is complicated and I can't yet see how to fix to use pressure levels.   

Arghh, I hate electric fence

Totally stalled on my long do list yesterday because my thought of just tying into A's hot wire was shot down by him.   I figured he'd be all for it to keep my horses farther from his fence in that strip.  But nope,  he told me his charger wasn't powerful enough.  That is totally false; I suppose he had worries my quick temp fencing would be grounded somewhere and cause his fence to not work all the way around his pasture.   So I tried to set up to tie into the hot wire dad had put up in the corral a few years ago when I boarded the part draft horse for a couple months.  I could not get juice out of that system.  Arghhh.

Dad has volunteered to 'look at it.'   He's sure he'll find a grounded spot and that will fix everything.  Perhaps he will but I think the dang charger isn't working correctly.  I don't get along with electric fence, I've decided its better to just have tight enough fence to hold the critters w/o the "oh it will bite me if I touch the fence" aspect but its nice to be able to keep the twerps from shoving on the fence so I understand why people who don't struggle with getting and keeping a wire hot use that tool.

I must force myself to do my taxes today.   I don't know why I've been so reluctant this year.  I guess just general hatred of the commiecrats who are in control.  But I need to not paint a target on myself so must gitRdone.  

I still don't know how to respond to the co-workers invite to Carter Lake.  It might be fun to hang out with a few co-workers for a couple hours.  I'm not sure its worth the drive, but I should drive my dang car more.   Saturday I ran to TSC to get fence insulators, had to relearn how to work the wipers and oh yeah, where is the gas cover unlock button.   Plus my driving muscles are so atrophied.  I've been getting sore driving the pickup if its more than an hour to destination.  It was better Saturday driving to Greenland with B, so the chiro adjustment must have helped.   But I get so annoyed with many of the co-workers.  They all have a dozen excuses why it is not their fault or their problem if things quit running.    I've been feeling like Stewart's "Maggie May" lyric lately.   "but I feel I'm being used,  oh Maggie I couldn't have tried any more"  

Still pondering how to do feeding pen for Tanza

 I am now thinking just use 3 corral panels in a kind of pentagon shape with the 2 pen fence sides.   Because I don't really want a pen that is only 1 panel square but 2 panels square would be oversized.  I think I'll use the hog panels where the fence is falling down in Razz's pen.    I could keep myself busy only puttering with the fencing upgrades I want to do.  But unless I find some kind of hired help, help in exchange for boarding there is so much other crap that needs to be done and I did want to plant taters.  I haven't even got dirt in the tanks.   Sigh.  Too much to do and not enough ambition and then I hobble myself with resentment that dad will not even air up his p/u tire, let alone park his ass on the riding mower instead of the recliner for a few hours and do the mowing or clean corrals with tractor etc.  I understand he can't get on and off to move hoses and shit but if he'd volunteer that he would mow I would go out and move that shit around to be out of his way.  But I need to just accept that I get to cover mowing and tractor work now.   Either have to hire someone or do it myself.  

I figured out the work thing that had me stressed is not totally just using the NWM inputs.  But it is still fundamentally flawed with the interpolation method for T.  And the code creator seems to be imagining a bias in the input product that I do NOT see.   *I* think the issue is that the newer version of that product is including information 33% higher than it did before and the very high information is causing issues.  But I think  I probably get to rewrite the code to ignore that extra information and demonstrate that before the stubborn creator would modify his precious code. 

Gray Monday

 The rain is an answered prayer and much needed.  But I am stressed out over stupid work thing that is really not my circus.  BUT still I am on the team, and I don't want to be associated with a lying product. And it feels like this 'new' way of doing the one product is basically just taking the weather model analysis rather than a bit of tuning based on our raw measurements.    Will I resign over this?   Not a high likelihood but possibly.   Stupid wimpy boss what resigned.   S told everyone about this issue, but no one sat the scientist that wrote this bit down and told him "it has to be OUR data even if that has more noise and bias wrt to radiosondes or other reference measurements than the weather anaysis. 

And fundamentally, other than the 'are we even using our measurements for T and P?'  I think its dumber than a box of rocks to be doing a linear interpolating of weather model to the resolution of the our product before optimizing to minimize the error/difference between the model and us.   The weather model is accurate at its levels.  Anyone with a lick of sense can understand that interpolating between model levels can introduce errors where there was an inflection point for T between the levels.   Seems like the optimization should only use the actual model levels for minimizing differences and preserve the higher resolution features from our raw product between those levels.   I can't fathom the why of interpolating a model and then using all those interpolated points versus our raw values.  My guess would be that that was an easier algorithm to write, but I'm pretty sure it is a poor way to do things.  

Rode with B and M and J again Saturday afternoon.   That was great fun.  Sunday felt like I was just chasing my tail.  I need a jig so I can drill 'square' holes to mount my trailer door hinges.   I didn't want to go to store, but needed to get Tposts and diesel for tractor anyway so I also went to Lowes, but they didn't have that jig in the store so now I still need to order it.   Probably I should just call around and find someone to weld the hinges on or see if the local dealer for this trailer brand would install the hinges instead of doing it myself.   But I don't wanna do that.  I want to feel like I can do this.  

I did some hand weeding.  I need to get out the hoe,  there is simply way too much flower bed to hand weed.  I hate to hoe it because its just random flowers, not a nice row and I feel like I might cut off stuff I want but if I want to get rid of some of the grass and gross weeds I need the tool to have any hope of making a dent.   I did also cut down two small elm trees that had died and got them burned yesterday.  Also burned some old snow fence and a wheelbarrow handle.  I did P's trick of just letting the fire separate the metal from the wood.   

I haven't figured out just how to deal with having a feeding area for Tanza now that Bee found out he can just shove and the non hot fencing rope will pop open.   I think maybe I'll just use the hog panels from the deconstructed stallion pen and one corral panel that has a built in gate.   

Had a blast riding with B last Sunday at Walsenburg.

She got a bonus at work and Stimulus/covid relief check and is loving the Specialized brand saddle that J and K sold to her at a great price so when the forecast for Friday night and Saturday was ewwww and I decided to only ride the LD on Sunday I figured B might be game to go.   The drive is short enough do do on Friday after her workday so she *might* be talked into going in May and riding the the 50 with me an the saturday day for that one. I don't want to push her but it would be fun for me to ride with her again.

I'm not sure how many non T rides I'll end up doing this year.   Just the 3.5 hour drive had my arms and shoulders whining so hard on Monday.   I'll experiment with wearing a bra that is less tight for driving next time, it seemed like maybe that extra tension on the collar bones made things worse.   No safety net of driving in a bra that is good riding support in case of forgetting to pack a sports bra but if my shoulders are happier after the commute to the ride it will be well worth that small risk.  I could always vet wrap my boobs in a pinch if I forgot to pack a good riding bra.  

But between that and not doing a lot of conditioning this spring I am going to skip the early May ride in northern WY.   My mind was screaming "Can not handle that drive even if the gal north of Wheatland wanted to come and drove a few hours of it by the time I got home from Walsenburg Sunday" 

I made a list of a dozen projects I want to get done relatively soon around here this morning.   Got 2 completed and the good start I needed on the pasture temp fencing for the grass seed I planted in March before the 2 foot snow.  I probably should be a hard ass and not let the horses graze the pasture at all this year so it could recover more but they love getting some green grass in late spring and it puts a nice shine on them so I know its good for them, and I don't know if I'd carve out much time for mowing so just not grazing wouldn't do all that much for it I think. If it looks like I'll still be here another year I should over seed a good section of the pasture this fall and fence off that section to get established next spring when I let horses graze

Also got a 3rd project partway done.  Got the garage freezer emptied and unplugged.  It is still cold inside it.  I didn't do anything to speed defrosting.  Everything fit in the chest freezer and house freezer section of fridge so I don't need to hurry things along before stuff is thawing.   I gradually emptied over the week but wrapped it up this morning and tossed away the old turkey necks I had saved 'to maybe make soup with later'.   Next year I should just toss the neck right away or put it in with the carcass when I make the one batch of soup I will mess with. 

Tomorrow I'm riding with B, M and J and having  happy hour.   Unless they do multiple loops I'll probably be home early enough do to at least one more thing on my project list.   I decided I can be lazy and just take the big trailer rather than hooking up to the little one and moving Tanza's saddle to it even though I haven't fixed my tack door hinges yet.  That is a biggish project on my list, I want to make sure I can finish it once I start so there will be the 3 new hinges to support the door. 

  I wanted to limit TV and internet time this weekend, succeeded fairly well today.   I want to limit TV news and social media more all summer.   I do somewhat miss the quick easy communication with casual buddies via FB, I guess I need to get more comfy with texting on the phone.  Overall I think the pluses of not having the crap that FB was always putting in my 'feed' and weaning myself away from "did anyone? / how many? people liked my post"  is a big plus for my mental health.    Haven't completely given up social media as I read the big blog quite a bit but I'm less into that too now and when I post a comment there its often too busy for anyone to comment back specifically to me so that limits the narcissism aspect.