Archive for June 2016
Thursday Night
When you don’t work on Fridays, Thursday night becomes the early occasion to party like the weekend is upon you. Have some neighbors over, eat a feast, play some cards, and stay up late having loads of fun.
Check.
I’m exhausted. And rejuvenated.
Is that even possible?
Bring on my 3-day weekend. It’s my last one before leaving on the annual week-long June bike camping trip, The Tour of Minnesota. I guess I better start thinking about preparations. Will it be a hot trip this year? Rainy? What should I pack?
I’m thinking about trying a minimalist approach this time around, so the questions take on more significance for me. In one week, I will be making a final decision about what makes the cut.
I hope the weather forecasts show some general agreement by then, and as long as I’m hoping, that they predict nothing but the smallest of chances for rain.
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Vantage Point
While sprawled on the living room rug after a mere single rep of planking, after leaving the couch because I was tired of wasting time waiting for a page to load, I watched the scenes of dinnertime unfolding before me from the unique vantage point.
It was entertaining and I was feeling exceedingly lethargic, so I laid there for a long time, propped on my elbows reading until the meal was served.
Cyndie grilled pork chops, and served them with sweet potatoes and corn on the cob. It was delicious.
She feeds me like I’m a king. I can never thank her enough for the elegant culinary luxuries she bestows upon me. Especially when it involves walking around me as I lay on the floor like a slug, watching her move to and fro in the actions of her craft.
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Ponder This
Time changes everything. Time has a tendency of changing my memories. I’ve been told that each time I remember something, the memory morphs a little bit.
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When I mentally visualize plans for the future, the conjured perceptions in my mind have the same “look” to me as when I am revisiting my memories.
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What if, in the present moment, I imagine a future occasion where I re-experience something I remember from the past?
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Popcorn Showers
Cyndie described her day at the ranch yesterday as a series of 5 or 10 minute downpours separated by periods of bright sunshine. The weather was notably unstable from dawn to dusk. I drove into an incredibly dramatic cloud formation on the way to work at dawn, stopping for gas just as the first cool gusts of the front swept in.
With the sun barely clearing the horizon behind me, the way it shone on the high roiling clouds was both eery and inspiring. A rainbow appeared straight ahead, looking more like a vertical stripe than a bow, and no, I didn’t get a picture of it. I was driving!
I checked the weather radar when I got to work and saw that there wasn’t much substance to the blob of precipitation. At the time, it looked like that would be it. Later in the day, when someone at work mentioned it was suddenly raining outside, I pulled up the radar image again. Our region was dotted with a countless number of popcorn showers. Evidence that supported the first-hand account I received from Cyndie when I got home.
During my return commute, I briefly considered the possibility of getting on the mower before dinner, to get ahead of the dramatic grass growth happening now. Two days after cutting it, the place begins to look like it has fallen to neglect. Luckily, my tired eyes pulled rank and kept me from doing anything productive. It saved me getting soaked by a surprisingly intense cloudburst about a half hour later.
Right on schedule, the clouds moved past and the bright sunshine returned. It made the roof shingles look like they were on fire. Smoky swirls of steam rolled down over the eave.
I can’t think of a better formula to make the grass grow even faster than it already was.
Maybe I should be looking into getting a bigger engine for our lawn tractor.
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Limited Success
We have been experiencing a significant instability in our internet connection of late. I have a suspicion that it could have something to do with all the leaves now on the trees again. It is particularly frustrating for my daily posting habit. I can’t force an upload to proceed if it doesn’t want to.
There might be a solution out there somewhere. Maybe we should invest in a signal booster.
Meanwhile, I’m inclined to not fight it and let my posts be short and simple. Wanna see what I did yesterday?
I did some poison ivy management with the aid of our new backpack sprayer. From the looks of the banner crop this year, we’re gonna need a bigger backpack. The more infestations I treat, the more other infestations I keep finding.
Or maybe this is just a function of my finally getting around to learning how to recognize it. Now I tend to find it everywhere I turn!
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Creating Results
I have envisioned a possible design for a wash station for years. Yesterday, with the kids here to help, we finally just did it. Regardless the way I pictured it, we ended up choosing to exclusively use material we had on hand. It meant we could take immediate action and not wait to buy supplies.
For example, instead of buying gravel to fill the grids we used, Julian and I scraped the driveway behind the barn. Time will tell if that will work as hoped. I can always replace material in the future if we find it doesn’t drain well enough. One benefit we have over whether this design serves the purpose or not is our complete control over its use.
We do not board horses for other people. There are just 4 horses here and they don’t need frequent washing. We have the ability to match our use with the limitations of the design. Likewise, we can upgrade the design as necessary if shortcomings become evident after use.
It looks good to see the space decked out now like the way I have been imagining it, but time needs to pass for the surface to “weather,” becoming stable enough to support the weight of our horses. Cyndie and the horses have waited this long, they can hold off a little longer before putting it through the ultimate testing.
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I’ve talked with Cyndie about trying it out in phases. Soon we will invite one horse at a time to pay a visit and maybe park themselves there, tethered to the hitching post, to receive some dry grooming for a spell.
In the long run, it’s the horses who will create the real final results.
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Cyndie’s Birthday
We are celebrating Cyndie’s birthday today! Our festivities actually kicked off last weekend when the kids and I unveiled some of our gifts, including a plan for today. Basically, it is our intention to give her as much of the entire day to be with the horses. We will take care of Delilah and prepare meals for her so that she can spend as much uninterrupted time as possible in the presence of the herd.
For gifts, we presented her with welcome signs that can be placed near the road when she hosts workshops or giant birthday parties for her daughter, and Julian premiered a preview of a web site he is setting up for her.
I am also hoping to finish creating a washing station for the horses, which is something Cyndie has wanted since we got them. I’ve had a plan in mind for a couple of years, and started by adding some fill to the spot in preparation.
That needed some time to settle, which gave me an excuse to procrastinate on the next phase. Now her birthday is giving me an excuse to stop procrastinating.
I started yesterday, burying one post for a hitching rail, but then got chased indoors by rain. Hoping today will provide a few chances to work more on it while Cyndie is nearby with the herd.
With luck, Delilah will be as patient and good company as she was yesterday while I worked.
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Precious Sleep
I have been coming up short of sleep lately and I can feel everything suffering as a result. For one, it makes commuting for 2-hours a day a hazard of droopy eyed distracted driving. I’m too exhausted to think clearly, I’m getting grumpy, and my sugar cravings are defeating my best intentions of thwarting them.
It becomes a vicious circle of fatigue breeding fatigue. On Tuesday night I had hoped to get to bed promptly in the evening to allow time for a full 8-hours of slumber. Circumstances foiled that plan and I stayed up about 2-hours later than I planned. In and of itself, that would have been manageable, but then my keen mind and body betrayed me an hour before my alarm would have gone off Wednesday morning, leaving me wide awake, when that was the last thing I could afford to experience.
Precious sleep got lopped off on both ends of the cycle.
It hasn’t helped at all that our internet connection has been totally unstable of late, causing me to languish in the limbo of half-loaded pages and images in my quest to toss up another entry in the daily blog effort.
I have a plan to get back at the dang fickle connection. I’m writing a short post and getting it done fast, so I have more time to sleep. Wish me luck…
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Bird Pests
June seems to be the time of year when the birds really make pests of themselves down at the barn. They are becoming pests because they are making nests. There is a starling that has taken a real liking to one of the downspouts from the gutter, plugging a short horizontal section between two elbows.
I tried to flush it out last night while trying to take apart the sections so I could remove the nest. I didn’t really want to be up on the ladder when the section popped open with a protective momma bird suddenly exposed. The fact that it wouldn’t try to get away from all the banging and shaking I was doing made me think all the more there might be eggs present.
I finally bit the bullet and yanked it apart. The bird still didn’t fly away. From the looks of things, it was caught on something between the bottom cutout in the horizontal gutter and the first elbow. The poor thing couldn’t free itself even if it wanted to.
I suddenly felt guilty for all that banging I had done to scare it away.
In hopes of avoiding any aggression from the exposed side, I climbed into the paddock and from that position, removed the last screw keeping the elbow connected to the gutter. The starling was gone in a split second, flying off in a direction I couldn’t see.
A custom gutter-downspout-shaped nest
Poor Delilah was beside herself with urgent desire for a chance to “assist” me with extricating the bird. I had her leashed to a fence post nearby while I worked. I feel like she gives me such a look of disappointment when I just let creatures go free like I did with this bird.
I can perceive her saying, “What are you doing! You let it get away!” with extreme incredulity.
She seemed to know it was trapped and so fervently wanted to just run up the ladder and offer it a helping paw. More likely, a not so helpful jaw, in all honesty.
Now it’s time to up my level of intensity in the project of bird-proofing the downspout. The plastic netting I tried last year turned out to be woefully inadequate. Next up, a plastic wedge-shaped screen that boasts “Revolutionary Patented Design Eliminates Downspout Clogs!“
Cyndie picked it up for me from a home improvement store on her way home from an event because I had texted her about the previously-unplanned-but-now-urgent need.
Meanwhile, something that looks like a pigeon keeps making a nest over the large sliding doors. That one’s a lot easier to dispatch. Seems like every time we open the doors, a couple of eggs drop to the ground.
I figure the birds think we are the ones that become pests at this time of year.
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Relative Something 