Gracie's new baby!

This is my spouser's new baby horsie. We may name her after the
father-in-law's B-17 in WWII; Winsome Winn. The name has to be
a W name (after the sire). The baby is a tad preemie and so is not
"up and at 'em" like her half sister, The Dread Pirate O'Malley
(aka Malley), but she is awful cute. Welcome Baby!

Pix

Aspen

Here is a photo of my newest horse, Aspen. She is 3/4 Percheron
and 1/4 Tobiano (a kind of Paint -- obvious). Unfortunately, I
have not had a chance to Photoshop myself out of the picture,
but at least it gives you some scale.

Aspen is only 2 (a baby for a horse) and we assume from esoteric
horsey "rules of thumb" that she will probably grow another 4
inches. Hope she comes equipped with stairs :-)

KennyG, aka the Dogfather, is teasing me about being called
The Horse Father or The Pony Papa. I don't own ponies, but
it *is* alliterative :-) The other name evokes a certain scene
from the movie the Godfather. Yikes! I'll stick with riding them,
thanks.

Been Awhile :-)

Since me last, I bought, detoxed and sold an off the track thoroughbred horse named Zamaroo. When I got him, he was still on on steroids, knowing nada but running (very fast). He left sweet, trained and happy. He was sold him to a 12-year old girl who will pamper and love him. I will miss Zami, he taught me a lot. He particularly like me trimming his feets.

Ok, ok, Mr. Dogfather, the great KennyG of urban legend, has requested a baby picture of Malley, the baby pirate horse. Here she is at 1 year old:

I also have a new horse, a 3/4 Percheron, 1/4 Tobiano named Aspen. She is HYOOGE, mostly black with a couple of small white patches, white feet and tail and blue eyes. She is also a baby at 2 1/2 years old. She has some learning todo, but is a nice ride. I will try to get some pictures soon (I know, what are the chances - hahaha ).

Gracious

Folk have been asking to see the horse (mare) and baby horse. This is easier than schlepping them all out to the farm. Alas, no baby pix yet. These were taken Saturday, March 10, 2007 by my daughter. The mare is 16.3 hands at the withers (the bump behind her neck -- figure about 5'7") and is a 7 year old Hanoverian. Enjoy.

Midwinter stretch

I like the new layout. Hope my occasional blog pals like it too.

Have you seen http://postsecret.blogspot.com ? It is funny, poignant, sick -- all at the same time. Just thought I'd mention it as it is one of the best escape-but-I-am-not-alone sites I have seen.

Life continues in progress. Finally dug my daughter's car out of the ice at GMU yesterday. It had been encased for about a week. Temperatures have been low and it was easier, in the end, to use my old rock hammer and a prybar :-) It took about and hour and a half with the help of my strapping teenaged son (6'2", eyes o' blue).

The horses have been "trapped" in the barn for a week. We let them out into the indoor arena and they go wild. Exercise and just freedom to run rampant - for a few minutes. Then we feed them up and put them back in the stalls. They will be glad to be back in the pasture, eating grass and playing horsey games soon. My wifey and I drove down to Powhatan VA to get a saddle. We took 522, kind of like a back road (ok, not really, but smaller and slower than 29 to Lynchburg, more like Rt 1). It was all quite nice. Good to get out of town for awhile. May consider retiring to there....maybe, or somewhere like there anyway.

Work drones on. No dominoes, no lunches out. Some of this is because we have deadlines looming, but a lot is because the soul and energy seems to have left the place. I will have to try harder to make some new friends there but my heart is not currently in it. I wonder if I am having winter blues. Guess we'll see when Spring gets here and I don't have any excuses anymore. Could be a good time to get on with doing stuff I enjoy more. I mean, 6 weeks of vacation??!! So, what am I talking about? I'll have plenty of time to play - woohoo!!

See Mr. Harris, no grumpy stuff, no blog o' scorn.... :-)

Nothing much to say, just updating

It's so easy to not post :-) Hope everyone had a good Imbolc, Candlemas, Groundhog Day, whatever your celebration of mid-winter return of light, new beginnings and anticipation of Spring....

Ok, updates for those who give a .... care:

Sold the gelding to a woman near Richmond. If she cannot get him healthy for riding, she will give him to her neighbor who has agreed to "retire" him on her 100 acres of grass (with 4 other horses). Good karma there :-) Good bye, Baywatch - you will be missed. We are keeping the other 2, Gracie and Malley, who are much healthier and full of pep since it got cold -- no bugs!

Daughter made the Dean's List at college in her first semester. She has been invited to join an academic fraternity/sorority. Seems like what they exist for is scholarships...woohoo!!!

My good friend Kenny G, has returned to his ancestral working home at Argon ST, Inc. We will miss him and wish him luck. We also hope to see him occasionally at lunch :-)

Speaking of work, I have been invited to play at some higher level stuff with one of our customers (hint for KGG - he was a guest with DICE). Could be interesting. The shake ups at work continue and with chaos comes opportunity. I will wait and watch.

Everything else continues in its merry way. Later for now.

WTF? (wonderful timing folks)

So, to upgrade blogger I must have a Google account? When did that start?? I refuse.
Google is becoming as ubiquitous and annoying as Microsoft and they can both just
bite me. I started using Google in Nov 1998, just about 2 months after they started
and now this. Well, enough o' that; time for a nonsequitur.

Work, the festival of pain that I share with Dogfather, continues to be strange. I will let
him post an eloquent rant, probably on his forthcoming blog o' scorn. Perhaps he will
mention me as Poison Pen Ken -- my new nickname. Apparently, my emails have
quite a following although I have not written one lately (mainly because people stopped
harassing me). I think of these email gems as "satire" the way the old Celtic bards used it,
which is to get rid of irritating presences over whom you have no real power. They are nearly always of the 2 meanings sort, where you must read between the lines. Most of the time, my
unarmed opponents do not get the double meaning and stay confused, but my wonderfully intelligent friends do ;-) It's fun and I don't do it that often - a dangerous game.

Well, my blog has never been what you call popular anyway, so no loss, but I may lose that capacity to comment on my friends blogs - which was the sole reason I started this queep anyway. For that, oh Google juggernaut, I say FO.

Horsey update

Looks like the mare is stuck in brood mare mode fo evah. *sigh* The gelding is all better and baby is just cute as can be.

New cafe opened today at work. Food is, so far, tasty. Dogfather's blog says it all. I also witnessed said philistines...sheesh. Ass-burgers; gloom clouds and everything. I kinda feel sorry for them, but will keep my distance.

We had Security Awareness Week this week, which meant lots of briefings and little work :-D
We saw the DICE Man's briefing - it was pretty good. I think dogfather continues to observe and make notes for his inevitable stand up routine... I particularly like his "Antonio GPS voice" -- ask him for a demo :-)

Well, tonight is "view the comet in the constellation Hercules" night for the wee lad's homework. Normally, the public school horning in on my home time really torques my nuts, but this may be fairly cool to see. We're off to the observatory. Latah.

Hallow e'en party

It was a tremendously stressful week at work this week. Not so much where I usually work as in my "inherited" collateral duty in Reston. So, we decided to blow off the traditional Hallow e'en party at the farm in Winchester and, instead, went to a Hallow e'en party thrown by the wife's coworkers. It was a good time with a couple of tequila shots, some blue shooters (tasted like citron vodka mixed with curacao) and mead. Yep, the mead horn went with my costume (the Green Man) so I was able to drink profligate amounts of mead from the mead horn. Never got a buzz, but the company was good and the drinks tasty.

Celtic New year starts on Samhain, the old name for Hallow e'en, or Halloween as it gets spelled nowadays, and there were a few Pagans at the party who liked the costumes; I went as the horned winter green man (Holly Man) and the wife went as the summer green man (Oak Man). Weird, archetypal and a little scary :-) but about what you'd expect from us. The other costumes ranged from very cool to pretty lame -- again, about what you'd expect.

On the horse front as an update, the gelding is looking GREAT and may be ridable soon. We have him tricked out in a black coat to keep him from shivering at night and straining his boo boos. The mare is looking better and continues to bulk up - she no longer looks like a candidate for the glue factory. Made her trot a bit in the ring and, as she used to, she looked maahhhvelous. The filly is so sweet, well trained (uh hem) and cute, that I have started to get offers for her. She should end up about 16 hands and is an excellent eventing prospect (so far). Hope their intentions are honorable as I may be tempted to sell her to a good home (I have one in mind). She is so fun to work with...I would miss her.

Well, time to set the clocks back. Tomorrow, Dogfather may exact some revenge for some minor pranks I did on his birthday. I may take some of the day off ;-)

Random stuff from October

Time for another post? Overdue you say? Get over it :-) How about that fog this morning!

In work related news, Dogfather has had some puppy issues lately as well as his own health issues. I am watching to see if his (dogfathah not pupster) immune system is suppressed because of the ragweed, "pneumonia weather", or because of the festival of pain that our job can become at times. He is wistfully contemplating leaving this thankless and stressful career and this area, to become a lower-stressed but happier person in a much less artificial and competitive place.

As for me, well...... Enough with the links? Hahahaha

Horsey update! My gelding's health is still in limbo. He looks great and sounds great (this, after a bout of pluerisy and abcessed hoofs) but still seems to have a sore back and/or a twisted pelvis. Either way, he is not yet ridable. My spousal unit says that California ordered horse autopsies for hundreds of horses put down from the track and found that many, if not most, had undiagnosed broken or cracked bones. Sheebus! We're watching him for that, but it is nearly impossible to diagnose. We just know he has some pain. The mare has started putting weight back on, finally. She lost hundreds of pounds after the filly was born. We assumed it might have been the wee vampire baby sucking the essence out of her, since the filly grew SO darn fast, but a sonogram shows some thickening in the small intestine. *sigh* So, the mare is getting HYOOGE amounts of food and is free fed hay and grass all day -- horse heaven! Pictures could be forthcoming at a later date.

As always, your milage may vary, batteries not included, any resemblance to persons living, dead or in-between is purely stupid and should be checked with your local doctor, tax and title may be extra, not valid in all states, Argon ST employees and their relatives are not eligible to win.

The Auld Shebeen

Restaurant review

Well, we were invited to go out with the dogfather and his da wife. They chose to meet us somewhere in Fairfax for an exchange of goods -- he was passing on a copy of Lost 3.1 and I had a bottle of mead of which I believe he had not tried. We are mead "aficianados" and perhaps the dogfather will post a mead review :-) This mead is not the best (that would be Lurgashall's Christmas Mead), but I don't think dogfather had tried this one, as I have said.

Anyway, as we had the choice of restaurant, we chose the Auld Shebeen. It is an Irish pub with a restaurant, bar (of course) and game watching room in the cellar. All in all, fairly pleasant although a tad loud. The selection of food was very good and I will be going back (MSG doesn't bother me much). The food was good but we suspect it may have had MSG in it. It turns out that doggie daddy is a bread pudding fan as well (just one of a million things we have in common) so we chose to skip the alcohol this trip and save the calories for bread pudding. I will say that the Auld Shebeen's pudding is sweet, lacks density and rum butter. Chutzpah and Blue Iguana still top this one. Next time, 20oz. Guinness *or* Irish coffee.

I think we might have gotten a tad more raucous with booze involvement :-) The restaurant music was better before the live music started but was mainly unobtrusive. Service was a trifle slow but bearable and cheerful. Over all, a pleasant dinner out with friends. Net time, we meet the dogfather and da wife out their way.

Ahhhhh October

Hooray! It's October; apples, cider, spiced mead, Hallow e'en/Samhain, several birthdays, and of course, crisp cool weather and maybe a misty, foggy day or two. I haven't even mentioned the trees yet.... I love this time of year :-)

The Dogfather and JamesF aka Spicelover, are waiting for the new season of Lost with baited breath..... hope it's a good season. In the meantime, Octooooooober.

Let's try a serious entry

Ahhh, the wheel of life.... today is my grandmother's birthday. She is turning 97. My mother turned 72 two days ago -- all of which tends to make one notice the passing of time. My daughter has started at George Mason University. She has made some friends and has started her journey as an adult. Grandma is ending hers and mom is winding down. So what? Ok, revel time. What about the wheel? Is it time to write something pithy in this venue?

Here goes: some days, *I* feel like a workhorse that is plugging away, spinning on the wheel, and not going anywhere. I do take satisfaction in knowing I have done well by my kids so far and as they begin to leave, I change from modelling "adultness" and advising, to watching from the sidelines - which has been the whole goal. But, for the first time in 18 years, I have to ask, what do I do next? Ok, I have some time since my son is a junior in high school, but do I quit the rat race (jumping off one wheel) and shuck as many attachments to this plane as possible? Or do I do the selfish thing and pursue pleasure, hobbies, meaningless pursuits (another spinning yet pointless wheel)? Some, like my auntie, take a spirit path at this point, but she also is still very much materialistic (shouldn't tell on my aunt like that, but I find humor in irony). I could go on, but that is enough for one sitting.

Time is a circle; meaningless except as a point of reference. Well, today, I am the point of reference and maybe looking to change to a different reference, another wheel. Is it boredom? Is it almost time? Do I need to change anything at all? Ah well, there is much thinking to be done, and today is just one reminder of many.

Still above ground

First posting. It seems so odd to put oneself out in the open. Maybe "trapped in a tree" is an ok place to be. I may get used to this, but not yet.