Author: Elaine

Paste Book

Paste book

One of my most useful stamping tools is this homemade paste book. I made it by removing the front cover from a salvaged binder. This is one of the heavy duty binders which allow the pages to lie flat, but any binder should work. I keep it filled with scrap paper in which I punch holes. I use a Rollataq to apply adhesive, but one could also use a gluestick or paste applied with a credit card. After a sheet of paper gets sticky, I tear it off and throw it in the trash. This way I always have a clean surface and don’t get unwanted paste on items.

Gmail

This summer, when I first started using Gmail, I changed almost all of my email discussions lists to my gmail address. However, in the past few days I have changed them back, because I had stopped reading the discussion lists since the interface was too slow. I use Thunderbird under Linux as my email client, and it is much faster to press the “n” key for the next post than it is to click the newer link and wait for the conversation to load.
I set up mail forwarding on my account (a service provided by my Internet provider) and use this to forward my mail to my gmail address. This way, I still get the storage and retrieval benefits of gmail, while being able to read my email rapidly.

A Good Thing

hay in barn

I always feel pleased after a delivery from our hay supplier, when the empty hay aisle is filled with sweet smelling green bales. We buy from a supplier who stacks the hay for us. The guys who delivered it this time were new and inclined to whimper when I insisted that ninety bales of hay had always fit before. The hay has be stacked carefully so we can still get through the doors in the back of the stalls to feed the horses.

Carcassonne

Yesterday, Jack and I played Carcassonne, a game by the author of Settlers of Catan which involves laying tiles. The game setup and play is easy, except for the end scoring of the placement of farmers. This review of the game discusses the issue.

Smoke’s dining room

Smoke has a new stall, except that it isn’t new and isn’t even a stall. The barn we built seven or eight years ago has two very large stalls, which are open on the south side. Gates shut off the stalls when the horses are eating their concentrated feed, and are chained open the rest of the day so the horses can shelter at will. When I have two horses at home, they each get fed in their own stall. With three horses, one has to eat outside the barn. Smoke has panic attacks, and will break out of small enclosures when he feels trapped, so he has always been the outside horse. (When there are only two horses, I don’t have to shut the stall Smoke is in.)

Smoke, who is a very old 27 now, has grown noticeably frailer over the past year. I really hated the idea of feeding him out in the open this winter, when the weather might be very severe. About a week ago, I had a brainstorm. When we brought the property, the only existing outbuilding was an old shack with a small enclosed room and an adjacent stall. The previous owner had stored junk in this building, and we continued the tradition. However, since we had whittled down the junk over the years, I thought there might be room to build a small corral inside to make it safe for Smoke to eat in there. When he wasn’t eating, we could shut it off with a gate, since it would be too easy for a horse to trap another horse in there. Jack was dubious when I proposed the idea, but said he would think about it.

This morning, I had asked Jack to help me by doing some nailing out at the barn. Instead, he started taking things apart in the old shed. We cleared the area, raked it up, and used chain link panels to block off two sides of a corral, with the third side being the wall of the building. The fouth side is the opening to the barn. I raked and shoveled to clear the ground of many years of debris. I then went over the area thoroughly with a strong magnet to make sure we had picked up all the metal. To finish, we placed a gate across the opening to the “new” stall, which will be closed except when Smoke is using the stall to eat.

All three horses came over at one point or another to see what we were doing. Smoke watched us the longest, almost as if he knew we were doing it for him.