Thursday, August 05, 2010

THursday THis and THat

~~This was the geocaching booth where Annie and her Groundspeak, Inc. colleagues worked at the National Boy Scout Jamboree in Virginia.~~


This was one of those mornings I walked upstairs with latte in hand, realizing I had nothing pressing on my mind for the blog.  So, now I'm here, with two sips of latte gone and deciding THat THis is a THis and THat day. 

No, I'm not going to capitalize all the TH's throughout.  Too tedious and too darn many TH's in our vocabulary. But "this and that" sounds good for a day like today. 

Bill has cut up part of a watermelon (and has been told to clean up the sticky drips) for his lunch today.  It's supposed to be a scorcher, at least by 2010 standards.  We haven't really had a lot of hot weather, so anything over 85 feels mighty hot.  Watermelon will taste good to foresters working in the field around Bonners Ferry.

And, Big Blue may be looking pretty good, long about 3 this afternoon.  Big Blue has been behaving this summer, except for its rim.  There's a tiny hole somewhere, allowing air to escape and reducing the rim to a crumpled up layer about every two days.  The air compressor is parked out next to the pool, so I just plug it in and blow up that rim again whenever necessary.  

I'm putting my round training pen back up after having it disassembled for the past couple of weeks waiting for the hay crew.  It made a big difference to remove the pen from that little hay patch---eight more bales there this year. The story was not so good in the big field---about 30-40 fewer bales.

So, I told Harvey to put me down for two tons of his hay over the winter, and we should have enough.  Our yield this year was 5 1/2 tons.  I'm buying two tons of first-cutting alfalfa-grass from Bonners Ferry and two more tons from Harvey should feed the three horses over the winter.

The hay is beautiful.  It didn't sit out too long so the bales are a deep green.  Willie is coming over this morning to put them in the shed for me.  He'll earn a little extra spending cash, and I won't have to get all sweaty, prickly and dirty.  I don't mind that thought one bit.  

We've reached that time of the summer when there's a great comfort in knowing that we have another winter's worth of  feed for the horses and we don't have to hold our breath and grit our teeth,  wondering what the weather's gonna do to get in the way.  

From now on, it can rain or the sun can keep shining----anything but snow.  I don't think we'll have snow in August, but as strange as this year's been, nothing will surprise me. 

I'm hoping to go over to Roxane's this morning to watch Heather in action.  Roxane called the night before last,  ecstatic.  She can get on Heather from both sides.  Heather does move forward with a person on her back.  Heather is slowly catching on about going in reverse with a person on her back.

Best of all, Heather does not rise in a vertical fashion with a person on her back.  Roxane is quite pleased with the little mare's progress.  In the meantime, I've been doing some ground work with Lefty, with saddle and bit.  He's a pretty cooperative guy and quite happy to do just about anything for me.

With the round pen back up, we should get some good training sessions in, and possibly within the next few days, somebody can get on Lefty and see what directions his movements go.  He knows how to buck, but he's such a sweet horse, I rather doubt that he'll be much of a problem in that department.

It will be nice to have three rideable horses.  The expense of putting shoes on them won't be fun, but if I can keep them going this fall, the satisfaction will be supreme.  

In other news, I talked to Annie last night.  She's working "on the road" in Washington, D.C., through tomorrow.  Seems the Boy Scout Jamboree activities ended earlier than expected and to change her airline ticket was nearly prohibitive, so she's just doing her regular job responsibilities out of a motel. 

She's had a great time, has seen a lot and enjoyed some wonderful experiences, but she's ready to be home in Seattle.  

We'll be seeing her over Labor Day weekend when she brings a bunch of Seattle friends over to have an "Idaho Cultural Weekend."  More about that as it approaches, but it sounds like fun for all of us.

I enjoyed a surprise visit from Miss Molly Klein yesterday.  She's having a birthday this weekend and invited me to the party.  It's a really special 26th birthday for Molly who has completed a year's worth of grueling treatments for sarcoma cancer.  

She stated that she's truly going to celebrate being alive because the odds for sarcoma patients surviving are very low.  Hats off to Molly for this meaningful achievement.  We're happy to celebrate with her.

Guess that's enough babble for now.  Happy Thursday.  May all your this and that's on this day turn out well.

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