Guests

Guests
We had guests for dinner last night: my mother, and two family friends from West Virginia whom I remember from earliest childhood. They own an apple orchard, and every autumn deliver crates of apples to people around the eastern half of the USA. Since they had already planned to visit Kansas City, they extended their trip to Colorado Springs to see my mother. (Driving across the length of Kansas is a true proof of friendship.)

I cleverly planned the dinner around lasagna, which meant that Jack did most of the cooking since he is the lasagna expert. I didn’t have to do anything but clean and fix the salad. As a bit of nostalgia, I found pineapple upside down cake (something my mother used to make a lot) for dessert. We had a great time listening to my mother and her friend reminisce about high school, including the time they ended up in a parade while driving my grandfather’s Model T.

Boring dressage stuff

In my post about upgrading to Fedora Core 3, it sounds as though I did nothing else while it was happening. Although I spent a lot of time checking to see if the damn thing was done yet, I actually accomplished quite a lot since I couldn’t use the computer to distract myself as much while it was busy updating itself.

Today, I went and took a lesson from my trainer on Hap. Although my trainer works with me for short periods of time on a catch as can basis, it had been a while since I took a formal lesson. Working more or less on my own, I can feel good things happening, but have missed the input from a ground person.

Since I am so far out of shape (though not as much as I was a month ago) I didn’t do any jumping today. Mainly, we worked on dressage type stuff. I do most of my riding in a forward seat, and want to develop a better seat when I attempt dressage. I’ve been focussing on this a lot during the past month, and now no longer feel as though I am leaning backward when I am actually correct.

It was a good lesson: lots of trotting and cantering, trot to canter transitions without me leaning forward to get them, and downward transitions without me clutching at Hap’s face. Aside from my position, the main focus was on keeping Hap on the outside rein. This is not a problem going to the left, because Hap likes the right rein, but he is very disinclined to stay on the left rein when going to the right.

We took a break by learning to walk on the bit. Hap has a marvelous walk, but we are used to doing it as we would in a hunter under saddle class, on a very light contact where the horse should be round and forward and seeking the bit, but not on it. I only ask him to go on the bit at the trot and at the canter, and didn’t want to work on it by myself without help since I don’t have the feel for it and didn’t want to screw up. Since I have done it now in the lesson, I think I understand the feel well enough that I can start working on it by myself.

We finally finished up by working on leg yielding, shoulder-in and extended trot. Hap does the first two quite well when I don’t screw up and try to turn him into a pretzel. He did them quite well today. We also did some real extensions, which is something we have very little experience together. I’ve only really succeeded once or twice before today on my trainer’s horse, but Hap and I clicked and were doing quite well.

Afterward, I helped my trainer with a beginner lesson. She was expecting two little girls, and only one showed up. So I climbed up on the other pony Danny (despite a child’s saddle that did terrible things to parts of me not normally mentioned in polite company) and was the second “student” in the lesson. This gave the beginner someone to follow (and lead) and also inspired CJ, the little white Arab the child was riding. When he gives a beginner a lesson and there aren’t any other horses around, he spends all of his time trying to convince my trainer that the child is too little to be more than six feet away from her. Danny quickly figured out that we were baby-sitting, and that he wouldn’t have to work that hard, despite having me on his back. We even did some drills at a trot together, and then played a bit of walking tag. Tag was a challenge since I didn’t want to catch her too quickly, or be too obvious about getting caught myself.

Martha Stewer

Image
Martha Stewer is the most opinionated of the three pullets who belong to my friend. (Every time I call them hens, my friend corrects me and tells me that they are still pullets.) She is also the largest, and the one you notice first because of her glowing white color. Martha doesn’t like to be touched or carried. She doesn’t do anything obnoxious like peck, but gives a running, indignant commentary of clucks when anyone has the effrontery to pick her up. My friend insists that she is also the most intelligent of the three, but then you aren’t working with much when it comes to chickens.

I am looking forward to fresh eggs.

Fedora Core 3 Test 3

I’ve spent the last day or so upgrading my system to Fedora Core Test 3. My system came up without a problem, including network connectivity, so I was able to use a browser and email immediately. Unfortunately, yum, which is the utility that allows updates, had some problems, and it took me a while to get it working. And then, it took an even longer while to download all the updates to get me a current test system.

However, my upgraded system seems to be working fine now. I haven’t done much checking yet, because it is pointless to do so until your system is current with the patches generated since snapshot for the install CD’s were created. I will have to fix my palm to sync with my desktop again, but this seems to happen every time I do a major upgrade.

Fence fighting

Fence fighting
Smokes entertains himself by fence fighting with the dogs. He used to canter up and down the fence line to drive the dogs into a frenzy, but has found that it works just as well to stand at the fence and make suggestive movements with his head.

I don’t enjoy this hobby of his, but am glad to see its return. For a while, a month or so ago, he had quit doing so. In fact, he was so shutdown and shrunk into himself that I though he might be starting the equine equivalent of turning his face to the wall. He had become very lame on his bad leg, probably due to stamping at flies, and had stopped moving around much, probably due to the pain of the abused knee. However, the flies are gone, and Smoke is back to his old, obnoxious self.

Meeting in Denver

Yesterday, Jack and I met athenais who was making a weekend trip to Denver. We met at the coffee bar at the Tattered Cover, but decided it was too crowded for easy conversation and adjourned to a nearby pub. Jack and I first met athenais at a party in Maryland, and some time was devoted to figuring out where exactly that was. It was over two decades ago, so fuzziness on the details can be excused. We had the server take several photos of our groups, which included the friends with whom athenais was staying, but only this one by koroshiya turned out well.