Horse Notes

Dino had one of his periodic bouts with colic last week but seems to be on the mend. Occurs a couple times per year, he has some diarrhea and he goes off his feed and water. I give him a mixture of wheat bran and psyllium to help clean him out. I also use a trick I learned from a Linda Tellington-Jones book called "belly lifts". In the book they use a towel and two people, but with the minis I can just lean over them and lock my hands around their belly and lift.

I have started on expanding their paddocks. So far all I've accomplished is to auger the 14 holes for new fence posts. Most of the holes require at least two attempts to get deep enough. The auger will go down until it hits a layer of clay and then it just spin on top of the clay. I found the solution was to pour a bucket of water in the hole and wait a day before trying again. With high temperatures in the 90's for at least the next week I probably won't be making any fast progress on the construction.

On an unrelated note, I have a new neighbor. John is a recent retiree from Portland. One of the first things I mentioned was the automatic outside light on his garage, you know the orange colored sodium things. He must have found the switch to disable it since it wasn't on last night. There is enough light pollution around here from the airport, we don't need any more. Seems like a nice guy and replaces some folks who didn't even talk to their neighbors.

Next weekend is the renewable energy fair. I still need to disconnect a solar panel that was used to power the garden pond pump since I'm donating it to the auction. John worked in the recycling industry in Portland, I wonder if he wants a free pass to the fair.

Skype

Just got a headset to USB adaptor for my Mac to try out Skype. If you don't know, Skype is a free voice over internet (VOIP) program. It uses Peer to Peer technology so there are no central servers. It is free between users although they do have a pay service that allows calling regular telephones all over the world, typically $0.023 per minute, but much higher when calling cell phones.

Not sure how well it will work on a real conversation due to the long satellite delay at my end. It works using their echo account although my voice isn't very clear. If anyone wants to try to contact me. my username is "certsoft".

Back from California

Got back on Wednesday night. On last Thursday we left for California. We stopped at El Aguila Real Mexican Restaurant in Lakeview for lunch, some of blandest "Mexican" food I have ever tasted. Maybe they don't want to upset the local populace, most of which have a gun in their pickup trucks. We stayed Thursday night at Super-8 motel in Red Bluff, not bad for a Super-8. I dropped off my mother at her friends house Friday night and proceeded to the Best Western in Camarillo. The price has gone up quite a bit since 4 years ago but I noticed they now have RJ-45 jacks in the walls for internet access. Too bad I didn't bring my laptop.

Saw a number of friends in Camarillo area during the weekend, including a barbecue by Ken Church and dinner at a very good Chinese restaurant called "Chesters". On Monday I picked my mother up at her friends house and we went up to Santa Barbara. I had lunch with a friend from Lompoc who works in Goleta and then dinner with friends in Santa Barbara at the "Elephant Bar" which was very nice. On Tuesday we drove up to Pleasanton, stayed at a very dumpy Ramada Inn, and had a good dinner with friends from San Ramon. On Wednesday we did the long drive back to my house, arriving about 8:30PM. My mother left Thursday and stayed overnight with her cousin in Prineville and then drove home on Friday.

There are some uncomfortable situations visiting various friends. I consider myself "middle of the road", but by European standards. By most of my conservative friends viewpoint, that makes me some sort of socialist. One of my friends said that "California has gone liberal" and it was pretty hard to avoid laughing. I suspect that many of these people get their news from "Faux" News which is basically a propaganda channel for the bush regime. I did my best not to start a fight. The other issue involves my mother and religion. Over the 5 days of driving it's amazing how many times she can mention "church". I'm an agnostic and find it amazing that people can take this shit so seriously. I wonder which will come first, our species destroying itself, or growing out of primitive superstition.

Glad to be home and back to the middle of nowhere. Dino managed to escape under the fence where it had come loose from the posts, so I have some fence work to do. Today I dug out some "thistle" weeds and mowed the front yard. Picked up some pressure treated 2x4's to be able to staple the fence fabric at the bottom and hope to auger some new holes for fence posts to expand the boy's paddocks.