Disclaimers

I was informed today that I need to restate my disclaimer on my previous post. My random images included a photo of a cute little car I saw in a fast food drive through line but I included it when I was commenting on cleaning my car... The car pictured (unfortunately) is not mine. I still have the cute little red Cavalier you have seen in so many previous snow photos.

In other news, a really spectacular horse I know is rather surprisingly for sale. As much as Marie and I would like to add him to the carriage horse string, he is out of our price range. The picture here shows just why he is out of range and so desired. His name is Kobie and he is a Friesian cross (likely with Percheron). He is 17hh, 1600#, and is beginner gentle. He is listed on Sherry's website ( http://www.supergentlehorses.com/ ) with more beautiful pics and a video. I wanted to let any ultra generous person out there know what a wonderful early birthday, belated Christmas, or Valentine's Day gift he would be. ;) And tomorrow I will go buy a lottery ticket... what is life without dreams?

My Car

NOT my car!

Dentine

Random photos in this blog. I found some old pictures of Annie and Toby when they were "kids". The rest are random photos that have caught my eye today.



As for the title of today's entry, I saw a dentist today. I have been trying to avoid it as #1 we are broke #2 I know I need a bunch of stuff done to my bottom incisors #3 who DOESN'T put off the dentist?



The reason for the visit was that my teeth are finally throwing in the towel and aching like mad. I got the pleasure of taking 18 X-Rays and getting a general once-over. The really nice Doc said I have no cavities but need a "deep cleaning" (sounds ominous) and he will finally remove the cursed permanent retainers! All of this will be completed in a few weeks.




I am getting to like the new "Corporate" style of medicine that is being implemented now a days. I now have Dental insurance through this place, and medical through the Urgent Care facility I have visited on a few occasions recently. The fees are quite reasonable and now when I go in the prices are not anything that will have me paying out for the next half century. Cody is on the plan also. Sweet!

In other news, I hate parasites. And not just in the normal human response to foreign body invaders, I hate the class also. Probably part of this is my natural aversion to organisms that burrow, tunnel, and otherwise destroy other organisms. Honestly, though, a lot of it is that I am having to really crack the books for this class. I am spoiled by having so much experience in this field. I rarely have to do much studying for my classes. I was hoping to be able to focus on the A&P lab but I am spending far more time looking up photos of Nematode eggs and Hexacanth embryos I need to be able to identify by Latin name.

It occurs to me that the A&P and Parasit classes have a similar difficulty for me: Latin. I really don't like Latin names. They are always spelled so funny. And I have a hell of a time trying to remember things I can't pronounce. What is with the doubled letters where you wouldn't expect them and then no doubles where there should be? The biggest stumbling block is the odd vowels. In English the vowels stay pretty much the same. There are goofy rules and exceptions for other things but the vowels stay pretty much close to what I learned in Kindergarten. Latin has blown that out of the water for me. I now balk at any unfamiliar word that contains more that two vowels. It may take me a while to resume my previously good relationship with English. I think I may be a little "gun shy" after this quarter. *sigh*

And now for a lighter subject: Morgan appears to be the only one in the household with any drive to clean. She is the normal "tornado" that kids are: leaving her jacket and backpack in the middle of the floor, wrappers on the table, dirty bowls in the sink, but once we ask her to clean she does it with gusto!

She had had Kiyah, one of her little friends, over to play this weekend. They pulled out all the stuffed animals and such and, of course, left them out. Tonight Cody asked her to clean them up and when I went down to check she had not only picked up her toys, she had swept the floor! She does NOT get this from me. I have no desire whatsoever to to any more cleaning than necessary in any situation, except maybe at the barn. Maybe I should turn her loose on my poor car...

A Poly-Filled Day

It is snowing again. And it's cold. Again. I believe it was 12 degrees today and another storm has rolled in. Good thing I am still fascinated by the seasons thing.

I am coming to realize why the Eskimos have something like 100 different words for "snow". This morning there was a blanket on my car that looked like the poly fill that you blow into the stuffed animals at the build-a-bear places. It was caused by the super light, super cold snow that fell most of the night. This made super thin filament ice crystals then as the morning came on the snow got a little denser. Finally on top of the super thin filaments was a half-layer of more "normal" flakes and the tiny snow "balls" that tend to show up when the snow melts and freezes as it falls.

The best part of this "poly fill snow" is that it *poufs* when you brush your car off, just like a powder puff exploding all around you. I had a huge grin on my face while experiencing this phenomenon, which is quite a feat for me at 8am!

As the day wore on the snow flurried softly. At one point the sun came out and I thought "That was a nice little storm. Now it will clear up." Wrong. About 2pm it started snowing for real. I had to brush my car off again after classes and managed to get a bit in my car upon entering.

The roads weren't too bad on the way home. Once again I was thinking we were over the bad stuff and was wrong yet again! There is another storm moving in and the schools have already declared that they are on a delayed start in the morning. Morgan's school anyway... mine starts right on schedule. Yippee. Have I mentioned how much I don't like Parasitology?

OK, enough about the snow. I should mention that I did get to go to the Stock Show again on Sunday. We got to see the 8 horse hitches and the heavyweight sled weight pulls. Totally cool! Check out the videos on my Facebook page. (hope this link works... http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/video/?id=1131106228 )

The Heavyweight pulling class was awesome! The biggest team had a combined weight of 5000lbs. and they pulled 14500lbs. That was COOL! Watching those horses dig in is breathtaking. They sure love it too! The drivers have a hard time getting them hooked up before they take off.

Lastly today, I have included a few new pics of Annie that I messed around with in Photoshop. I got to ride her two times before the weather turned "normal" again. She has three blankets on again and I am back to wearing three layers at minimum. Alas, it is Colorado in January! We couldn't expect the April weather to last.

Stock Show and Straton

I got some great shots of Straton last week and finally got around to editing them. It took me a bit to figure out how to loose the eye reflections without washing out the rest of the photo but I did finally get them edited pretty well. He is such a handsome boy!

As for family updates, we had the pleasure of having my mom and dad out for the weekend this last weekend. It was a blast! The National Stock Show is in town and we got to go see some Show Jumping, some cattle, and lots of vendors! I had to work Saturday but they took Morgan to see the Wild West Show. Morgan loved it and came home with tons of stuff including a lariat that she and Buddy made. The poor animals have been tortured ever since. I had to untie poor old Critter this morning. He was lassoed around his middle and tied to a chair. He didn't seem worse for wear but the dogs are running scared. Morgan has been getting some talkings to but so far she is less than convinced that her attentions are not being received well.

I got to go with my friend from work, Katie, yesterday on a rare "Girl's Night Out". We looked at all the cool vendors and found some really cool stuff. We spent about half an hour at a trapper's shop looking at pelts, and skulls. Katie is a Wildlife Biologist and I had a lot of fun grabbing skulls and trying to stump her. Unfortunately I only knew the common names and she answered in Latin. Her common names were spot on though, and it was a lot of fun for a couple of animal-nerds.

We also got to see some Dog Agility and we also got to pet a cow and some pigs. We each also stepped in a poop pile each and felt quite satisfied at the end of the evening.

Today I was supposed to volunteer at the Animal Shelter where I adopted Straton from but when they finally answered the door they told me, and the three other girls who had signed up, that they were closed and we weren't needed. Nice. But it did give me the opportunity to ride my horse.

It was a bit windy when I arrived and I saddled the little goof up and took her over to the round pen to work off the two weeks of "off time". After that I hopped on and she did great. The wind kept getting steadily worse and at one point I even had to turn our backs into it. Annie did stupendously! She was a bit lazy, as usual, but she only spooked twice, once when walking past one of the hay bales, the tarp had come loose on one end and was whipping around wildly right next to her, and once at a mailbox with a newspaper covered in plastic that was blowing a bit. Each time it was only a little half-step to the side. Not too bad for a green three year old! I really enjoyed it.

Well, that is about all for this week. I go back to normal classes tomorrow. (Blah) I can hardly wait for the next holiday. I will be glad when this is over and I can get back to a semi-normal life.

Six Inches... OK, maybe Eight

We woke up to overcast skies and white covering the back yard. Cody said, "Oh look. It snowed a bit."

We yawned, stretched, and climbed out of bed. Cody looked out the window and said, "Crap! It's snowing like hell out there!"

I pulled on the snow pants and down jacket and headed out to find this:

The commute was horrendous. You know, for people used to the snow they sure drive badly in it. It was totally crawling. I did manage to snap a few pictures on the way. I also happened upon an apparent Colorado native as it was moving day:

Don't know if you notice but that is a quilt covering the sofa and the window is open. He wasn't even smoking, just enjoying the half inch of white moisture falling on his left arm. Lol!!!

My normally 15 minute drive took over an hour. Luckily I thought I had an 8am class and I didn't actually have a class until 9am. I was a whole half hour early!

Cody also took the dogs out and got some photos of them playing in the yard. Little Brigs had just had a massive haircut last night and enjoyed himself, though he did get very cold and has been asleep in the warmest place on the couch all evening. He has even refused to go out tonight!

Straton had fun also though he didn't get to go to the client's house and wrestle with the big Goldendoodle like Brigs did. Morgan has given him full run of her sling chair in the living room and he has taken to it like a duck to water. He is so good. The pics of him aren't as good as the ones of Brigs but Cody did get a few good action shots of him. He just loves the tiny dog and the baby. He is so very happy and we are just as happy with him.

A Christmas Story

So I checked my previous posts and realized I never really told everyone what I got for Christmas.

I got home late, as usual, somewhere close to 2am and discovered what I really wanted: a 102" Comp-Arf Yak! There was also a nice fire and candles and a card. Soon following the card was a little box. Yup. We're officially engaged! =)

I said yes of course and the ring is perfect. A small, gold, wedding band. I am thrilled that I can wear it all the time! I am far too active for anything that isn't flush to the finger.

For Christmas Day we went to the Urgent Care as mentioned previously for a nerve flare that caused the third sleepless night in a row. Provided with narcotic pain killers, muscle relaxants, and instructions to go to the ER we had a lovely family dinner with Cody's mom, dad, step-mom, two half brothers, and half-sister. The ham was AWESOME! We were glad that they brought chairs! (And ice and heating pads for me!)

After watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story, and some of Planet Earth everyone went home quite full and happy. Then Cody and I packed up and headed to the ER.

The ER doc was awesome. I told him my symptoms, history, and also that I had no insurance. He listened and explained that he had two docs in his practice that have similar injuries. He didn't order the MRI saying "you'd just have a $5000 bill and a result saying nothing has changed" and instead dosed me with steroids, Valium, and Percocet to sleep with. I was out of the ER in 2 1/2 hours. Seriously.

I was like a new person the next day. With a "Z" pack of step-down steroids and a few nights of sleep I was bouncing off the walls. I had one night of minor flaring two days after the last pill in the "Z" pack and no symptoms since then. I saw the Chiropractor today and am booking every other week regardless of anything to keep this from happening again. Better living through chemistry and eastern medicine!

I started school again yesterday and am remembering why I prefer to work than go to school. But at least I have an awesome plane to fix up for Spring flying! And as for the wedding... Cody and I are thinking Fall but likely it will not be this year. We just can't afford it until I get out of school. I'd say October 2010. Keep it open!

It's January? When did that happen?

Well, December is gone... I worked 25 days of the 31. My friend Katie at work has become my riding buddy and has even ridden Annie. All the pictures included in this post are of Katie, Annie, Pippin, Sweetie Pie, and Mikey. Pippin is the little Suffolk gelding that is 4 and is the draft me or Katie ride the most. Sweetie Pie and Mikey are the two driving horses I have introduced previously.

Annie and Pippin are buddies. They get turned-out together and are the same height, if not the same weight. Pippin is a goober like Annie and will be heading downtown to work this spring.

He's a bit of a goober to ride, even more than Annie. He isn't going to buck or anything but doesn't know how to walk straight, and is a bit barn sour.

Katie has a cute little gelding named Galahad that she does Jumpers with and she is working on teaching me to jump. I am working on dressage with her.

Katie sure likes Annie and puts up with her goober-y-ness. I just need to get in shape before I can figure out how much work I need to do. At this point 5 minutes about kills me. Sad.

Isn't Pippin cute? He's almost as wide as he is tall and is super quietly tempered. He will be awesome downtown.

Sweetie Pie worked her little rear off this Christmas season. Mikey didn't work much as he is more of a "Thursday" horse, meaning he is semi-retired and just isn't up to the heavy holiday workload. He did come out a few nights though and looked down right adorable in his little Santa hat.

This last picture is of the front range as viewed from Marie's place. It looks so lovely with all the snow. I start school tomorrow and I would say more but I am tired. I will update more of the new another day.