I finally had a lovely week long vacation

 The end of the trip went a bit south.   The clutch failed on sister's pickup.  So she had to get towed to Cheyenne and have it replaced, cost her about 4K.   I told her I had about 3K to give her from CO refund, prius sale, and sale of dad's pickup early in the trip and she was "no you keep it,  I owe you some for skid steer from years ago"    I pressed the 1500 I had in cash for the trailer on her after the clutch situation.   I figured she would probably just rip up a check if I wrote her one for the full amount.   

It has been hard to get back into work and taking care of the place now after having had the time off.  Does not help that work did a big reclassification of all the 'scientist' job titles and we got merit raises and I am the same level I was just with a new job description and my raise is just the midpoint raise.   In previous years the UCP director would stress that almost everybody is getting the midpoint raise, if the new director did that I missed that meeting.  The money is decent and its not like they gave me a lower raise for not hitting th e'meeting, and sometimes exceeding expectations' mark.  But I used work as the distraction from sucky life the last couple years and saved their bacon a few times from outages and it feels like our group director has ZERO appreciation.   

But I need to just take this as "here's your sign that you need to not shortchange home life, horse fun, etc. for those ingrates"  Well, mostly not ingrate(s),  just the director; but the rest of the group tell me thanks, etc. but that is as far as it goes.   They mostly feel overworked as well.   My supervisor and the sys admin ARE overworked.   Others, not so much.  

Thinking about buying a Rushcreek bred 12 year old gelding

 I rode him in the LD at Fort Robinson on Sunday.    We ended up going really really slow and pulled at the vet check because we were past the cut off time.    Lisco and I were a bit nervous with each other the first few miles so I wanted to just walk,  then after climbing up a long canyon he had settled in enough that he could started doing a slow endurance pace but the green bean I have been hauling to rides and helping a bit was struggling with her pony being ornery.   After we had gone several miles and he was refusing to go up yet another hill and she was going to lead  him up it my stubborn red headed red neck, year of the dragon self hit the wall and I told her to lead Lisco up the hill and I had a short come to Jesus session with Chip and made him carry me up that hill.   Another rider had caught up to us,  Lisco wanted to trot after she passed us and Chip was being ok with  trotting so we did make a decent pace to the vet check those last couple of miles.   

If I had been on Taj and had a longer lead rope, rather than on an unfamiliar somewhat nervous horse plus shortish lead rope I might have put a lead on stubborn Chip, but the endurance saddle is not really set up to pony a horse plus I would have had some nervousness that Chip fighting the lead could have caused him to step off the trail and fall down the hill even on good old Taj so I don't know if I would have done that or not.   Chip and rider have a ways to go to get to endurance riding,  she gave in too quickly when he got stubborn, although to her credit she led him a ways and got back on every time but I think he figured out he could at minimum not have to carry a rider up the hills if he acted up,  and she was nervous about trotting downhill.   I get that, but on very gentle grades with a ride that is hilly, which is most rides in this area one needs to trot to stay on pace unless it is a steep downhill slope.  

Maybe Tanza is less lame than I thought.

 Yesterday when I came home from riding the horses all went tearing and Tanza really cantered hard.  And he seemed fine afterwards, and I didn't see anything today when he was walking.   I didn't ask him to trot.

An endurance family posted an 18 year old arab, they are wanting to rehome for free,  sound for 25s they think, but would 'need work' to stay sound for 50s on Saturday.  "Bully at feeding time, we would want first refusal"     And I thought about it and was like "no, I don't want essentially another feed lease,  I would want to pay something for the horse, and I would give first refusal to them for free if I just needed to downsize.  But I felt scared that they would think I was not providing good care if I asked to try him and they agreed.

And now if Tanza is maybe going to be sound I don't know if I want another horse.   I have so many now.  But I'm still tempted by the "spicy but seasoned" 15 year old I saw on CL.   But it would be kind of crazy to pass on a horse with an endurance base for the CL horse.  

Toby was pestering when I went out to feed and I yelled, (not super loud) at him "shut up dog",  and I think my housemate heard, may have thought I was yelling at her dog, and even if she knows, I was talking to Toby may be appalled that I talked like that to 'my' (not really, Toby is still Dad's dog, even though Dad is dead now) dog.   And sister has not called and I didn't get her called today, nor did I get online to Progressive for car insurance and call the poor service + stupid $$$ outfit to tell them I'm canceling.   I did text housemate that I was talking to Toby.    Just ughh,   hopefully I'm making mountains out of molehills.     

Thinking about getting another horse.

 There are a couple of completely different ads that have me intrigued.   One for a 'spicy but seasoned' 15 year old small bay gelding.   That is close to what I thought I should get, old enough that I won't worry about how to rehome a prime of life horse if my health fails but young enough that it should have 5-7 years of being able to do the shorter endurance rides.  

The other one is a 5 year old Arabian.   Actually I just read through his ad and he has zero rides.   So I'd have to pay someone to put at least 6 weeks on him,  I can deal with a spicy horse or a green horse, but they have to be good with my somewhat clunky mounting and I would not trust a horse that had only had ground work to handle that. 

 I also found an ad for feed bunks on FB that might? work for keeping horses out of big bale hay net.  It is a falling apart feedbunk, so I would just take the top off and put the frame that holds it up over the hay to minimize horses putting feet in the hay net.  But I've no ambition to contact either seller and maybe check them out.  

 I was pretty productive yesterday.   I did two loads of laundry, ran the robot vacuum on both floors and cleaned out the BATs mangers,  I need to sweep out the crud on the bottom, yesterday I just scooped out big chunks of wet crud ; then I need to put back the buckets I want to have for trips.  And I should clean out the tack compartment today.   

Thank God my 'home' life is not rough right now

 Work has been such a bear the last couple of weeks,  if I was having to deal with breakdowns or sick critters etc at home right now too I'd probably be in a fetal position.    But work will sort itself out.  They can't afford to fire me for the #W*& downlink site that lied about being ready to collect data for us, cuz the group is already stretched very thin and they'd have to actually do some research and trial and error for issues instead of just asking me;  and the patches I made to software have not broken processing, knock wood.   I'm just sooo frustrated with that downlink site,  that outfit is pretty reliable, but this is a tropical ocean location, not their Norway/Sweden sites for polar satellites, I should have expected the tropical attitude would be in play, but nooo, I had to trust their email that said they were all set.  And then I didn't make myself clear enough to the sat ops people in Taiwan that I did not want them to do any extra work to turn on links right away.   Oh well, people are not dying in the streets because of this glitch, it is okay.

Mostly like my new house mate

 Well that reads wrong.  I like her, period.   So far I mostly like sharing the house with her too.   That is not 100% because she has a hyper Australian shepherd dog that she just keeps on leash all the time to manage the dog.   But I can throw no stones wrt to dog selection and that goes quadruple for dog management.  She is great feeding the horses for me in the mornings and last weekend when I camped overnight just to do a local fun ride.   I was hauling a young gal that lives near me and the ride was starting early so it was nice to get there and get registered and vetted the night before and only have to tack up in the morning.  I don't love the feeding in the mornings for me only because her dog barks when she puts the dog inside to have hands free to work.  I don't mind a bit of barking but the dog is shrill in the morning knowing that she is missing feeding and my noise tolerance is low when I first get up.  I may ask R if she could try tying the dog while she feeds. 

R got a job at the Animal Sanctuary.   L will probably be happy about that.  I am happy for housemate that her commute should be really easy, the Sanctuary is close to here and the drive is low traffic; and they are offering decent pay and benefits.  

Ugh my work.   One of our download sites was down with a power outage for days and recovered at 3 am local time last night.  I asked on slack this morning should we ask the satellite ops folks to add them to the schedule.   Radio silence from management and our satellite ops person.   So this evening I put on my Being in Total Charge hat and emailed the satellite ops folks myself (no one said we should NOT do this.)  I am not the one who should have made that call but someone needed to make it.  

P.S.   The #)W@)@ download site is NOT sending us downlinks after they SAID they were ready to downlink from the spacecraft and send data.   Argghh I hate it when I do something pro-active and it backfires. 

jingling curb chains

 I may have a housemate starting around Aug 9 or 10.   I have my doubts that my little backyard horse keeping situation will suit her for very long unless she is wanting a long breather from actively training horses but one never knows.   It will be perfect for me if she stays a while as I would be very comfortable doing some camping riding trips with an experienced horse person here while I was gone and I do want to do some horse camping to ride with sis and do fun rides at endurance events this fall.   Maybe she would even evaluate potential horse for me if I decide to take the plunge and buy one.  

Part of me is hoping work funding gets cut and my job goes away within the year to give me a big shove to sell and move to WY or NV.  (two low cost home insurance states, that have scenic horse riding places.) 

But I will make myself do the adult thing and get some quotes from other insurance agencies and see if I can't do better on combined home and auto insurance than the current company.   Its insane to have to pay over 10K a year, I haven't had an auto claim in ages,  I don't know if mom put in a hail damage claim to cover part of shingling the roof or replacing windows and  that is probably 20 years ago if she did.   Property prices are high in this area, but most of that is getting the 10 acre property, and easy Weld permitting to put in improvements, the house itself is not worth a huge amount, and I wouldn't pay $$$ over what it is worth to rebuild a similar size house if it was hit by a tornado or burned down, I'd either get a much smaller house, or I'd sell the property and let the new owner deal with scrape and rebuild, but I think stupid Colorado put in a regulation to make insurance companies pay to replace, rather than having a fixed max $ amount of coverage with the onus on the property owner to pay attention and increase coverage as building costs rise.