The Farm
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Blogging is exhausting, which explains our 1-year hiatus. But now we're back and ready to go. Since blogs are self-indulgent and narcissistic by nature anyway, I might as well unabashedly grasp that particular brass ring without subterfuge. I am writing to tell you about me.
I entered my first horse show last weekend at Eventful Acres, an equestrian facility about an hour's drive away. It was a 2-Day Horse Trial, which is a form of eventing. I've been training for this for a couple of years so it was quite a thrill. I entered with Vegas, the Flying Tomato (so dubbed by our trainer because of his enthusiasm for the cross country phase of the contest).
Eventing consists of three disciplines: dressage, cross country, and stadium. At this competition, stadium came before cross country, but dressage remained first. I was nervous going in because dressage takes so much precision and is, in my opinion, the most difficult of the three. Here's my go. The video is a little jumpy and seems to be running a little fast, so I wasn't scooting quite as quickly as it looks. I also added the subtitles to describe the movements just before they happen. The discipline is judged (by the people in the box at C) and, generally speaking, you are judged on the regularity of the gait, smoothness of transitions between gaits, and the geometry of your riding (executing circles precisely, for example).
My division (Beginner Novice) had 59 entries broken down into 5 groups. Eventing is scored on penalty points (lowest score wins). My dressage score was 30, which was far far better than I expected. At the end of the dressage phase, I was in sixth place in my group of eleven.
Stadium was next. I was a little less nervous for stadium, but not by much. Unlike dressage, where you know weeks in advance what the course will look like (always 20x40m) and what the test is (the list of movements), you don't know exactly what the stadium course will look like until the day before the contest. Susan and I walked through it several times and we made a plan on how to ride it. The fences are numbered and the order you jump them is fixed, but the details of exactly how you get from fence to fence are up to you and very important. The Tomato is very good at jumping, but he has to have the fence "presented" to him properly. This term means riding him squarely to the jump instead of at an angle and he has to be going at the right pace: too fast and he'll jump through it and knock it down (4 penalty points), too slow and he won't have enough momentum to clear it cleanly and he'll knock it down or he'll stop and "refuse" (4 penalty points). My job is to make sure of the presentation. There is also a time limit which, if exceeded, also adds penalty points (1 per second). The goal is ride "double clear", that is, with 0 jumping penalties and 0 time penalties. Here I go. With a little luck and a lot of effort from the Tomato, I got through cleanly. My score remained 30 (30 dressage + 0 stadium) and that moved me up to 4th place in my group.
The next day was the last discipline: cross country. This is everybody's favorite because, well, it's fun as hell. The scoring is similar to stadium in concept: penalties for refusing a jump (the obstacles in cross country are generally fixed, and cannot be knocked over) and time penalties. The refusal cost goes up to 20 points, though, so the stakes are much higher. This cross country course was relatively short as they go: about 1200 meters or so. The first half winds through the woods on gently rolling terrain. There are some logs to jump, an upbank, a downbank, and a small pond (really a large puddle) to cross. The second half of the course is in an open field with some more logs and small wooden structures and another water. Due to geographic constraints, I have video of only the second half of the course (it's too hard to coerce my volunteer film crew to outrace a horse from one half to the other). The two halves are separated by a dry creek crossing, which amounts to puttering across a gully about 8 feet deep. The video starts just after the crossing.
Just like stadium, my job in cross country is to maintain an appropriate pace (too slow and you accrue penalty points and risk refusals, too fast and it can be very dangerous as the terrain is variable and the obstacles don't give. Cross country is the most exciting and the most dangerous of the eventing disciplines) and offer proper presentation. In order to achieve these goals, just like stadium, Susan and I walked through the course several times developing a plan: ride faster here, ride slower there, turn around this tree, etc. I should mention that, in addition to taking advantage of Susan's expertise and extensive experience, we also have a fantastic trainer, Jackie McCrae. She also, of course, walked through stadium and cross country with us and warmed me up for each discipline. Coaching during the efforts is not allowed in eventing: you're on your own.
Cross country was as much fun as I thought it would be and I got through with 0 penalty points. That means I finished "on my dressage score", which was my goal. I also finished second in my group of eleven and third out of 59. Much better than I hoped for!
Now the Tomato needs some time off as he has developed some soreness in his rear legs. But, with a little luck and care, we'll be back next spring for another season.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Here's a tidbit from Alan Tonelson, a fellow at the United States Business and Industry Council:
"Wal-Mart certainly does lower the cost of living for American consumers by offering low prices, but it also lowers the standard of living, because as jobs leave the U.S., the country's wage level gets lowered, too. And so we're no better off than we were before."
Thought it was worth mentioning.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
We're starting work on the last big construction project before winter. And the winner is...the barn! Here's the current southern wall of the barn. This is the side that gets the most sun and rain. I replaced the middle section two years ago (there should be one more slat, but it's a long story why it's not there - OK, not so long, here goes: the barn design calls for each of the three sections to be populated with 2"x6"x12' spruce tongue and groove boards. IMO, spruce is too soft to span that length, resulting in the severe twisting evident in the picture above in the first and third sections. The middle section was just as bad, so I replaced it with 2"x6"x12' douglas fir. T&G doug fir needs to be special-ordered and when I got the load, one of the boards was too twisted to use. I cut it to relive the twist and all was well. Still, I wasn't happy with just replacing the 12' sections with doug fir. So I also had the vertical h-channels made (visible in the middle section). This summer, I put up the h-channel in the middle, effectively shortening the span to 6'. Unfortunately, I was careless in cutting the twisted 2"x6"x12', so the two pieces were not 6' each, and unusable in the current configuration. So that's why there's a board missing.)
Aside from the buckling of the remaining sections, in the winter, the rain is driven by prevailing winds against the south side. Even under ideal conditions, i.e., all three sections replaced with doug fir, there's still a gap at the top of the wall of about 4 inches. This, as far as I can tell, is by design. The boards are supposed to be slipped in at the top of the edge h-channels and dropped into place. Accordingly, there would be no way to place the last board to fill the 4" gap. We tried ripping 2"x4" boards to precisely fill the gaps, but the resulting structure was still not water-tight. The next effort (which can be seen in the photo) was to lap a 1"x6" over the gap, but this proved to be ineffective as well. The underlying spruce walls continue to buckle away from the 1"x6" and the center section (now removed) was still not water-tight. I suspect that this barn is not oriented correctly and that one of the sides with an overhanging eave should be presented to the prevailing winds.
So, the plan was to affix an overhanging awning to the frame of the south wall. The overhang would protect the walls from the rain. A good plan: simple, inexpensive. Then, we got to thinking. If we're going to put an awning on that side, it might be nice to store some stuff under the awning: maybe some hay, feed, that sort of thing. Clearly, though, if we're going to put hay or other perishables under the awning, they would need to be protected from the rain that gets driven by the southern winds.
I guess we'll have to wall in the awning, then, and make a proper room out of it. So that's what we're doing. The tractor work is done, leveling out the 10' section we decided to enclose. So that's the haps, man.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Things are going well with Vegas and me. DW was kind enough to come to my lesson this week and take photos. Whee. He's a good boy. I'm considering entering a show next month. Better get rolling on that if it's going to happen, though.
Look out, Monkey!
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Yar, it's been so long since we updated. Lots of new stuff to report. First, lineup changes:
- Vegas, a 16.2 hand Trakehner/Thoroughbred gelding (ouch!). Our current crew of little girl sized horses were getting tired of lugging me around so we got a more substantial fellow. I'm really excited about him: my first horse :-O
- Monkey, a 1.2 hand DMH Tuxedo. We've been interviewing for the position of Emergency Backup Kitten for a while and we do like our tuxedos.
Pretty cool, what? There's more stuff going on, but, for now, here are some more photos: Vegas, Vegas, Vegas, and Vegas.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
I got your back, darling...I'll take over for a day.
What can I tell you? Hmmmm... hmmmmm..... Oh yeah! We're fostering kittens again. Right now we have four semi-feral kittens in our upstairs bedroom. They are probably 5 weeks old and very hissy and scared. We hear them bombing around like a herd of elephants at various times during the day. We also go visit with them and try to socialize them to people, but they really aren't interested. At least they know how to use the cat box and we don't have to keep them in the bathroom and clean cat shit off walls of the bathtub twice a day. That was fun. Real fun.
My two riding horses are in various states of disrepair. Miles was diagnosed with pedal osteitis a couple months ago, so no more jumping for him. Sigh. We never did even get to a show...Colin holds that honor. He's got a fancy kind of shoe in front, but I don't really like them - or at least I don't like how they were applied. And his medial-lateral balance is off, too, but the farrier thought there wasn't enough hoof to work with so he's waiting for the hooves to grow out a bit. I'm going to have my (new) regular farrier work on them next week.
Paddy has the on-going crack saga in his left hind. It is driving me crazy and is one of the reasons I switched farriers - for two years my old farrier wasn't able to fix it - we'll see if the new guy can. I put pictures on a horsey-bulletin board and got some comments about the balance of his feet so at least I feel like I have a game plan. I'm also taking him to the vet clinic for x-rays on Saturday to check out the balance of the bones inside the foot. Cha-ching!
But I'm sure that's all boring for you. So let's see, some spicy news...Pico is sitting on the couch farting next to me and whoooo boy it is not pleasant.
We're still waiting for Barley to ...dare I say it...kick it - have you ever had a pet that you just didn't like? My conscience keeps me from giving her away or taking her to the pound, but that dog drives me nuts and I have to admit I will probably not be too sad when she's gone. I'm such a bad person, I can't believe I just shared that.
We've got a busy social season planned - dinner with neighbors last night, drinks tonight with the same people + two more, a progressive dinner party with 18 of us on Friday night, the following weekend a holiday party, the weekend after that another holiday party. I've never been so busy!
Work is sucking because it is the holidays and we're very busy. I miss my old holiday work schedule of the closed office between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Those were the days, indeed.
Peeee - eeeewwwwww! Pico!!!!
Gotta go!
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Rats, so, I blew it already. I was supposed to blog every day and I missed yesterday. No great honking surprise, I guess. Anyway, here's something for today. It's cold here, brrr. It's been dropping down into the 20's at night. Maybe not hugely cold for some of you, but that's about as cold as it gets here. It really makes me feel bad for Susan when she goes out to feed the horses in the morning. Worse, when she gets up, she lets in a draft of cold air under the covers.
Cold or not, one of the projects I'm working on now is a deck for the side of the house. It's a little more complicated than I can handle, so I've got the help of Phil, one of our neighbors, and a buddy of his, Mark. To place its location, let's first step briefly into the Wayback Machine.
In the beginning, there was this (no, not Kenya, nor even a little bit of snow, look into the background). This was the location of, as Vernon (Mr. Altman, to you, Sonny) so aptly named it, the "White Trash Pool", more formerly known as a Doughboy. We moved the pool to a neighbor with kids for the hard-driving bargain price of $0. This is on the east side of the house. In case it's not obvious from the photo, the grassy part where Kenya is sniffing drops off about five feet to a flat spot where lied the pool.
So, the plan was to build the World's Biggest and Most Expensive Deck Imaginable. Well, to be fair, that wasn't precisely the original plan in so many words, it's just kind of turned out that way. I'm not quite sure when we broke ground, but this picture was taken on 9/19. The viewpoint from this photo is almost the same as the one with Kenya above, so it should give you some idea of the positioning of the Monstrosity.
There are two things that make this deck:
- cool
- harder than I can do by myself
The first thing is an area designed to hold a hottub. Hottubs are not heavy, particularly. You'd get the same load on the deck as you would inviting over four of me (though why you'd want to, I can't imagine. You'd never get a word in edgewise). But hottubs on their own aren't really much fun: not, at least, until you put water in them. Then they get really heavy, like having 40 of me standing in the same place on the deck. Here's where we would stand.
The second bit that makes this deck too complicated for my little head and clumsy fingers is a walkway that runs around the perimeter. We did this to avoid an unsightly railing, which is necessary if the deck surface is more than three feet above grade. Well, just don't walk off this end in a drunken stupor. If you did, and then turned back around to look at the house, or, more likely, to curse at me and ask for a phone to call your lawyer, this is what you'd see.
Hopefully, we'll be able to finish it soon. A hottub would be just to thing to fight this non-California sub-freezing weather.
Rats, so, I blew it already. I was supposed to blog every day and I missed yesterday. No great honking surprise, I guess. Anyway, here's something for today. It's cold here, brrr. It's been dropping down into the 20's at night. Maybe not hugely cold for some of you, but that's about as cold as it gets here. It really makes me feel bad for Susan when she goes out to feed the horses in the morning. Worse, when she gets up, she lets in a draft of cold air under the covers.
Cold or not, one of the projects I'm working on now is a deck for the side of the house. It's a little more complicated than I can handle, so I've got the help of Phil, one of our neighbors, and a buddy of his, Mark. To place its location, let's first step briefly into the Wayback Machine.
In the beginning, there was this (no, not Kenya, nor even a little bit of snow, look into the background). This was the location of, as Vernon (Mr. Altman, to you, Sonny) so aptly named it, the "White Trash Pool", more formerly known as a Doughboy. We moved the pool to a neighbor with kids for the hard-driving bargain price of $0. This is on the east side of the house. In case it's not obvious from the photo, the grassy part where Kenya is sniffing drops off about five feet to a flat spot where lied the pool.
So, the plan was to build the World's Biggest and Most Expensive Deck Imaginable. Well, to be fair, that wasn't precisely the original plan in so many words, it's just kind of turned out that way. I'm not quite sure when we broke ground, but this picture was taken on 9/19. The viewpoint from this photo is almost the same as the one with Kenya above, so it should give you some idea of the positioning of the Monstrosity.
There are two things that make this deck:
- cool
- harder than I can do by myself
The first thing is an area designed to hold a hottub. Hottubs are not heavy, particularly. You'd get the same load on the deck as you would inviting over four of me (though why you'd want to, I can't imagine. You'd never get a word in edgewise). But hottubs on their own aren't really much fun: not, at least, until you put water in them. Then they get really heavy, like having 40 of me standing in the same place on the deck. Here's where we would stand.
The second bit that makes this deck too complicated for my little head and clumsy fingers is a walkway that runs around the perimeter. We did this to avoid an unsightly railing, which is necessary if the deck surface is more than three feet above grade. Well, just don't walk off this end in a drunken stupor. If you did, and then turned back around to look at the house, or, more likely, to curse at me and ask for a phone to call your lawyer, this is what you'd see.
Hopefully, we'll be able to finish it soon. A hottub would be just to thing to fight this non-California sub-freezing weather.
Rats, so, I blew it already. I was supposed to blog every day and I missed yesterday. No great honking surprise, I guess. Anyway, here's something for today. It's cold here, brrr. It's been dropping down into the 20's at night. Maybe not hugely cold for some of you, but that's about as cold as it gets here. It really makes me feel bad for Susan when she goes out to feed the horses in the morning. Worse, when she gets up, she lets in a draft of cold air under the covers.
Cold or not, one of the projects I'm working on now is a deck for the side of the house. It's a little more complicated than I can handle, so I've got the help of Phil, one of our neighbors, and a buddy of his, Mark. To place its location, let's first step briefly into the Wayback Machine.
In the beginning, there was this (no, not Kenya, nor even a little bit of snow, look into the background). This was the location of, as Vernon (Mr. Altman, to you, Sonny) so aptly named it, the "White Trash Pool", more formerly known as a Doughboy. We moved the pool to a neighbor with kids for the hard-driving bargain price of $0. This is on the east side of the house. In case it's not obvious from the photo, the grassy part where Kenya is sniffing drops off about five feet to a flat spot where lied the pool.
So, the plan was to build the World's Biggest and Most Expensive Deck Imaginable. Well, to be fair, that wasn't precisely the original plan in so many words, it's just kind of turned out that way. I'm not quite sure when we broke ground, but this picture was taken on 9/19. The viewpoint from this photo is almost the same as the one with Kenya above, so it should give you some idea of the positioning of the Monstrosity.
There are two things that make this deck:
- cool
- harder than I can do by myself
The first thing is an area designed to hold a hottub. Hottubs are not heavy, particularly. You'd get the same load on the deck as you would inviting over four of me (though why you'd want to, I can't imagine. You'd never get a word in edgewise). But hottubs on their own aren't really much fun: not, at least, until you put water in them. Then they get really heavy, like having 40 of me standing in the same place on the deck. Here's where we would stand.
The second bit that makes this deck too complicated for my little head and clumsy fingers is a walkway that runs around the perimeter. We did this to avoid an unsightly railing, which is necessary if the deck surface is more than three feet above grade. Well, just don't walk off this end in a drunken stupor. If you did, and then turned back around to look at the house, or, more likely, to curse at me and ask for a phone to call your lawyer, this is what you'd see.
Hopefully, we'll be able to finish it soon. A hottub would be just to thing to fight this non-California sub-freezing weather.
