Field trip

Lily

Every fall, a friend of mine with forty acres east of Colorado Springs invites some friends to ride her cross country course. Lily isn’t jumping yet, but I took her anyway so she could have some time away from home. I rode her around and let her graze while everyone did their cross country thing, and then tied her to the trailer while we ate the potluck lunch that follows the riding. Although Lily doesn’t load as easily as Hap, she is otherwise much easier to deal with on trips than Hap was. Hap would ignore his hay and water for hours, whereas Lily identifies where her food is immediately and occasionally looks around to see what might be going on.

Why I don’t like connecting flights

Jack called this afternoon to tell me that his parents, who were on route from Maryland to Colorado Springs, had to make a connecting flight in Houston Airport yesterday. Unfortunately, the flight to Colorado Springs was cancelled due to Rita. Fortunately, while my sisters-in-law were scrambling to find a flight for them out of Houston, my in-laws were able to walk onto a flight to Denver.

I got spoiled the two years we lived in Dallas: we could find a direct, non-stop flight to almost everywhere.

Hurricane Names

The Washington Post article Rita Is Gaining Force in the Gulf answers a question I had about Hurricane Names: what happens in a very active year when there are more hurricanes than allotted names.

But there is a finite number of preselected names — 21 — each summer, and after Rita, only four are left this year: Stan, Tammy, Vince and Wilma. If that list is exhausted, the meteorological group will have to revert to a backup plan: naming storms using the Greek alphabet, beginning with alpha, beta and gamma.