Pony ouch

Apr. 2nd, 2012 08:10 am
murakozi: (peek)
Last week, one of the privately owned horses, Max, wasn't in his stall.  I was told he'd colicked a couple days earlier and that they'd taken him down to the equine hospital in Leesburg.  That had me wondering if I'd ever see the fella again.

I was glad to see him back in his stall when I arrived at the barn yesterday.  He'd returned the day before, minus 8 feet of intestine:



He's on assorted meds and doesn't seem uncomfortable.  Oddly, he's a lot friendlier than he was before.  That might be due to him being rather hungry.  For now, he's on a very restricted diet.  He gets a quarter flake of hay that's been soaked in water every two hours.  No grain and absolutely no treats.  He pretty much inhales his little meals.  It's tough on the staff at the regular barn feeding times, just giving Max a teeny portion while his neighbors get 8-12 times as much.  Still, it's necessary til the guy heals up a bit.

I also nearly got bitten by Cascade.  She's usually on the grumpy side but sticks to just looking unhappy when being saddled up.  Yesterday, though, when I was tightening her girth she turned her head and nipped.   She did manage to just snag the front of my pants and I certainly felt it.  Much harder and I'd have ended up with an equine hickey.  That earned her a slap on the neck.  I rechecked her saddle and blanket to make sure there wasn't anything amiss to cause her to nip, but found nothing.  I think she was just in a crabby mood and went a bit too far.

murakozi: (toro)
Dang.  I wish they looked this good in-game:


Hawks

Feb. 28th, 2012 11:14 am
murakozi: (tonkaface)
I've seen a pair of hawks outside my office window now and then over the past few weeks.  I first noticed them when one of them was making a bit of noise in one of the trees nearby.  Since then, I've seen them 2 or 3 times a week.  Since I don't know much at all about birds, I did a web search to see what sorts of hawks live in the area.  After looking at some pictures, I think they're red shouldered hawks.

I assume they're a couple.  Twice now, I've seen one of them land and poke around the nest the crows built and abandoned last year.  (those crows built that thing to last).  I noticed later a bit of greenery from some evergreen tree laying in the nest.  I'm guessing it either blew in there or maybe one of the hawks had it stuck on a claw or something.  I couldn't see them wanting to reuse that nest.  Aside from it looking to be too small, I suspect they'd dislike it for the same reason I assume the crows gave up on it:  The tree its in sways a LOT when it's windy out.

I wonder if they're scaring off other birds by hanging around so much.  Even though it's not officially spring yet, the birds around my apartment have been pretty noisy lately with lots of sparrows cheeping and at least one robin loudly proclaiming his virility during the day.   Here at the office, there's not a peep to be heard and I haven't seen any of the usual songbirds or even crows out there for a while.
murakozi: (bray)
Though I'm curious as to his views on dogs:



His official site seems to be pretty overloaded and slow to respond right now:

http://hankforsenate.com/
murakozi: (smile)
This 1954 film teaches us that keeping your house neat and tidy will help it be slightly less incinerated in the event the commies drop an atom bomb on your town:




Oh sure, you'll still be dead, but at least your house won't be as burnt up as those of your messier neighbors.

Safety

Dec. 22nd, 2011 08:59 am
murakozi: (bull bow)

I find this Virgin America safety video kind of amusing.  Of course, the best part of it is at about 1:20 or so:



Even bovines are clever enough to know how to operate a safety belt!
murakozi: (pornovision)

...and zip codes....



Okay, so it's more a weird sort of gospel thing, but I can imagine the makers thinking it was hep.

murakozi: (bull nose)
This past weekend I spent up in Connecticut, spending a little time with [livejournal.com profile] chefmongoose and watching angry cows try to get men off their backs.

A few years back I was doing some on-site stuff up in Maryland for a contract. It meant staying in a hotel up there for a while. Being a Hampton Inn, it was oriented toward business travelers and was located in a spot that was convenient to the nearby Army base where we were working. Unfortunately, it didn't have much in the way of food or entertainment nearby. So, after a long day at the site and then dinner, I really had nothing to do other than sit in the hotel room with it's so-so net connection, read or watch tv. While the hotel did have satellite tv, there weren't many channels available in the room. One night, while channel surfing through the limited selection of stuff, I ended up watching bull riding. Naturally, I was rooting for the bulls. Dunno why, but I got hooked.

So I've kept up with it since then. When I finally upgraded to digital cable at home, I discovered I was getting Versus HD, which is where the PBR (Professional Bull Riding) stuff is shown. (Oddly, I can't watch the non-HD Versus channel without subscribing to a sports package. Go figure)

Anyway, last year I saw that one of the event locations was at the casino up in CT where [livejournal.com profile] chefmongoose works. I figured that this year, I'd try to get tickets to that one if I could. There ended up being some issues with the casino being able to host it this year. Word was that their arena was going to be used for a 'local sporting event.' The bulls ended up getting relocated to Hartford instead. The only two events on the tour that were close enough to me and to which I could potentially get a friend to go with were this past weekend in Hartford or this weekend in Columbus. So, Hartford it was.

I took the train up to CT. I didn't really want to deal with the drive and flying was stupid expensive. I'd only ever done short, commuter-type train stuff before. While longer than flying, it wasn't a bad experience at all.

I figured this might be the only time I actually watched an event in person, so I got tickets for some decent seats. The only ones considered better were seats above the actual chutes, but those ran $500 per person. Hey, I'd have done it if I could, but I sure can't justify spending 1000 bucks for bull riding. I did splurge and get a 'gold VIP upgrade' to the tickets, which meant a little behind the scenes tour and getting to stand up over the chutes (where the $500 ticket seats were) for a little while.

I took a lot of blurry pictures. I'll try to get around to posting some of 'em this weekend. Got some decent swag as part of the VIP package, got some autographs, drank overpriced beer, and generally had a good time. I even snagged a little video of part of the opening show. As I expected, it's not great. The phone's camera didn't like big bright flames and pyrotechnics in an otherwise dark arena and it has a rather shakey bit and me saying 'whoah!' when I discovered that some of those fire effects were fairly close to where we were standing at the time.

So, yeah. I fun weekend with good friends n some bovine fun.
murakozi: (Default)
Teddy got clipped too last week.

The last time he was clipped, he was left with a T that looked more like it was from a t-bone steak. This time, it's closer to a regular letter T.











Not as fancy as Pumpkin's rear, but still cute.
murakozi: (nose)
I've mentioned and posted pictures of how shaggy some of the horses at the barn can get. Usually, it's mostly a winter thing, but some are still pretty fuzzy year round. Doc was like that. Two of the ponies, Teddy and Pumpkin, both have a decent amount of hair no matter what time of year it is. To help them keep cool in the summer, we clip them. It's usually done by Heather and sometimes she decides to get a little creative.

Pumpkin was originally named Kipper when the barn bought him. Don didn't much like that name. Since the fella is round, orange-ish, and was bought in October, Don decided to rename him Pumpkin. Pumpkin got clipped earlier in the summer but was getting pretty fuzzy again, so Heather clipped him just before the weekend. She decided the lil guy needed a holiday theme:








murakozi: (toro)
...or girl. I really dunno which and probably never will.

After weeks of 'feeding' an empty 75 gallon tank with small ammounts of pure ammonia, the lazy-ass bacteria in it finally got off their butts and the darned thing finally cycled. After a big ol partial water change, it was time to go to the store and bring home the fish who will be the tank's sole inhabitant.

And here he/she is:






It's not the greatest pic, but the best I could get. I was lazy and used my phone's camera and it was having trouble figuring out just where to focus with all those layers of clear stuff in the shot.

A juvenile tiger oscar. Right now the little guy is only about 2.5 inches long. He'll get bigger, though. Much bigger. As an adult, he'll probably be somewhere between 12 and 15 inches long and weigh 2-3 pounds. That's why he needs such a big tank to live in.

In the picture, he's still in a small acrylic acclimation tank that's hanging on the side of the 75 gallon aquarium. He spent a good bit of time in there once I got him home so that he could slowly get accustomed to the water chemistry of his new home. He's actually a little pale in the pic. They can lose a bit of color when stressed and he'd just had his whole world changed on him. The olive-colored areas on his body have already become a bit more black as of this morning. He's really quite pretty with the orange glowing against his dark background.

Oscars are cichlids and, thus, rather territorial. They tend to prefer being alone except when spawning. Since they're sexually monomorphic, it's pretty much impossible to tell their gender without either seeing a pair spawning or a close up medical inspection. So, unless this one decides to randomly lay eggs for no reason some day, I'll probably never know whether it's a boy or a girl. Dunno why, but I just seem to assume male.

He needs a name. 'Bubba' has been suggested. Ackbar is kind of an obvious possibility. Of course, he could end up like probably 90% of the oscars out there and end up called 'Oscar.' I dunno. I'm open to suggestions.
murakozi: (peek)
Well, we lost another of the old timers at the barn. Doc, the big, friendly chestnut quarterhorse died about a month ago. For some reason, I've been putting off posting this until now.

It was one of those cases where I knew it was coming and would happen soon, so it wasn't as hard an initial blow to find out he was gone. Doc was an old fella. At 28, he wasn't as old as some of the others we've lost recently, but he was no youngster. He'd been mostly-retired for a long time now. As was the case with Mickey, he was one of those horses who actually enjoyed working. When you went in to tack him up, all you had to do was hold up his bridle and he's push his head right into it. He got unhappy when he didn't have work to do for any length of time.

I think that's what got him in the end. In a way, he was indirectly a victim of this summer's heat wave. It wasn't the heat itself, though. Doc was definitely not a hot weather horse. Even when he was younger, he'd work up a sweat no matter how light the work was. I can identify with that, myself. As is the case with many horses, when he got older, he got shaggier. He had quite a coat year round and was a serious fuzzball in winter. It was heavy enough that we'd clip him when the weather got warmer.

Anyway, with the high temperatures we had this summer, we couldn't let Doc do even the light two or three beginner classes a week that he was doing. So he spent his time in his stall or in the pasture. He wasn't workin and wasn't happy about that. He started losing weight and mass fast. The old boy started having trouble getting up. Eventually, Sandy had to make the choice to put him down.

I really think that if hadn't been so hot, he could've done a class or two now and then and would still be around.

Doc was a classic, old school western pleasure quarterhorse. He was a big fella, strong, and smart and looked like he should be out on the range with John Wayne on his back. His whinny sounded exactly like the stock 'horse sound' you'd hear in movies. Doc was the friendliest horse I've ever met. When someone came to the barn who was nervous or scared of horses, you brought 'em to either Mickey or Doc. Not only was Doc friendly and not at all pushy, but he also absolutely loved getting rubbed anywhere from under his jaw to down between his forelegs and would make some great equine happy faces if you found just the right spot. Having a horse tilt his head and do a happy lip curl when you scratch their throat can make 'em a lot less scary.

I'll miss the old boy. There are only three horses at the barn now that were there when I started riding.
murakozi: (Ferdinand2)
Gee, I never thought I'd be a coffee achiever.


As was the case for a lot of people around here today, I got to experience my first earthquake. 


While my California friends have described it as 'fun size' and "a little one,"  when you live somewhere where earthquakes are rare, even a 5.8-6.0 (depending on the news source) is a bit of an event.


It started out with some vibration in the building  My first thought was that there was some HVAC or other work beign done on the roof.  My company is on the top floor, so it's not unusual to feel/hear something when work is goin on.  After a couple seconds it got more intense and it was obvious it wasn't maintenance stuff.  I dunno how long it lasted.  Probably not more than 10-15 seconds, maybe a bit more, but it had everyone out of their offices and in the hall wondering what'd happened.  Checking out the windows on various sides of the buildings, we pretty much ruled out a plane crash.  One of the VP's thought it might've been a bomb in the garage, since hed been in a bombed building before and thought it felt the same.


Then the building management company set off the fire alarm to evacuate the building.  I made sure all the people in the part of the building I'm responsible for were on their way to the stairwells and out we went.  Fortunately, it's only in the low 80s outside, so we got so spend a pleasant, if boring 45 minutes or so out in the parking lot waiting for the all clear to come back inside.


I'm just glad that it wasn't severe enough to make any of the aquariums fall over or their stands fail.


So, yah.  Earthquake.  That's one more thing to check off the list of things I've experienced.
murakozi: (bull nose)
On Friday I saw an Airbus 380 across the street at the airport for the first time.  I didn't know any of 'em flew into Dulles.  That's one big ol plane.
murakozi: (trail)
Sheesh.  Finding a new doctor is a royal pain in the butt.  I really liked my old doctor, but back in 2006, he switched to a boutique practice and stopped taking any kind of insurance.  Since then, he went even further and now only does stuff involving Lyme Disease, sleep disorders, and something else that I can't remember.

I have a minor issue which made me want to see a doctor, just to be sure it wasn't something, so I tried to find another one who takes my company's health insurance and also has decent ratings on the web.  That's no easy task and was made worse by the fact that the company managing our health plan here is changing on August 1.  In the end, I gave up on finding anyone in-plan who had a good reputation *and* was taking new patients.  I called the old doctor's office and they recommended a doctor in the same building as them.  I also learned that my last visit to the doc was in 2005.

Anyway, I rather like this doctor.  With the confusing mess that is my insurance plan, even they weren't sure whether my plan'd cover them.  Still, they decided to only charge me for the maximum copay that they knew of with any plan ($40) and submit the claim and see what happened.  The office staff was darned nice as was the doctor herself.  The biggest downside to the physical was being told that, according to the newest height/weight charts, I'm something like 35lbs overweight and considered obese.  Gee, and here my goal was to lose 6 pounds so I'd be under 200.  I don't think I've weighed less than 180 since late high school.   Owell.

On the horse front, it looks like Boone won't be staying at the barn.  He's a good horse and people really like him, but he has some soundness issues.  Like a lot of horses, he can handle being a single rider horse, but the workload of a lesson horse is a bit much.  I was surprised to learn that he's only 6.

There's another new mare that arrived this week.  That brings our current horse count up to 39.  Her name is Gwenie and she's a small-to-midsized pinto.  She's got a very "Misty of Chincoteague" look to her.  I don't know much about her so far.

The heat yesterday really left me drained by the time I got home from the barn.  On the plus side, the usual lugging around of hay and such does seem to have worked out the minor soreness in my left arm from a tetanus shot on Friday.  I'm just glad I'm not working there tomorrow, when it's going to be really bad heat-wise.
murakozi: (stable)
There are some new faces at the barn nowadays and  a few old faces that're gone. 

Hamilton, the friendly old grey who was notorious for making sounds like some kind of angry seal when he wanted his dinner was put down a little while back.  He'd been laying down and having trouble getting up.  Not terribly uncommon for very old horses.  It finally got to be really bad, though, and Sandy had to have the old boy  put down. 

Clay and Maverick both left to go to new homes.  They're both great horses, but have soundness issues.  The workload of a school horse is just a bit too much for them.  It's a shame since both of them were very popular horses.  Clay may come back one day.  It's unlikely that Maverick will.

So with 3 empty stalls, it wasn't long before 3 new horses showed up.  A thoroughbred named Trust was the first one.  It's unsure if he's really ours or not though.  His story is that his owner died and he ended up in the care of her close friend.  She doesn't have the time/money/inclination to own a horse so she gave him to the barn for free so he'd have a good home.  She's had second thoughts at least once though and may end up taking him back.  Trust is a thoroughbred and seems to be almost as friendly and easygoing as our other TB, Quest. 

The other two newcomers are Inky and Boone.  They both arrived on Friday.  I don't know much about them but both are very friendly and sociable.  Boone in particular seems to want to say hello to anyone who comes near his stall.  I'm hoping he works out since he's a stocky-ish mid sized horse and we need more of those.
murakozi: (smile)
Unfortunately, I think it's Australian.




Notice that the vehicle operating the pump or whatever is a DeLorean with big ol offroad tires.

Just Caws

May. 2nd, 2011 02:41 pm
murakozi: (flowers)
As happened last year, there is a pair of crows that have decided to nest in one of the trees behind the building my office is in.  I don't know if it's the same pair as before.  In any event, this couple chose one of the trees right by the building as opposed to one on the other side of the parking lot as last year's did.

They're currently in the process of building the nest, which entails a lot of flying back and forth to the drainage area between the parking lot and Rt 28 and the grass surrounding it. It's interesting to watch them.  They'll land, poke about and find a stick or clump of dead grass and carry it around a bit, sometimes dropping it and picking up something else instead before returning to add it to the nest.  I kind of wonder what makes one bit more attractive than another.  The nest seems to be going together quickly.  The spot they've chosen is about 10 meters from my window, so I've a decent view of the construction process.  Mostly it seems to be just dropping whatever they brought back and waddling around on the nest a bit before flying back off to find more.

As was the case last year, the other members of the avian population aren't too thrilled about the crow presence.  The area where they're gathering nesting materials appears to be near a mockingbird nest.  Just about every time they fly over there, they become the target of an angry mockingbird attack.  Earlier, another crow landed in one of the smaller trees near the gathering spot and both the nest builders went after it.

Depending upon how the tree the nest is in grows, I may have a decent view of the goings-on in the nest.  Perhaps I'll be able to see the little ones in there eventually.
murakozi: (mulekick)
Even though I now recall posting about it last year, I'd forgotten that Virginia's free system for filing state income taxes was gone as of this year. I did my federal return last month and just kept putting off doing the VA one until last night. I had an 'oh yeah' moment when I realized that ifile was no more. Technically, there are still ways to file it for free online, but they pretty much require that one makes less than $15k per year. That means I either have to use something like Taxcut or Turbotax or file a paper return.

Now since I do get a small amount of money for working Sundays at the barn, and there's no VA income tax withheld from that, I usually end up having to pay a little cash to the state. I expect that and my federal refund always more than covers it. This year, it came out to 92 bucks. I really don't like the idea of having to spend 20 or 30 dollars to be able to file state taxes via tax preparation software, so I went to VA's site and downloaded actual tax forms.

The rationale for getting rid of the state's free tax filing site was that it would save the state money. I don't recall how much, but it wasn't really a tremendous amount (I want to say it was less than $100k per year). So, instead of the amount it would've cost to process my return electronically (which I assume was probably less than one cent), the state now gets to deal with a paper return and a paper check. Even with automated systems, I suspect it'll cost 'em a lot more.

Unfortunately, I think most people will just go and spend the extra money to get the state modules for their tax software. I'd kind of like it if the majority switched back to paper returns. It might result in ifile coming back.
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