Five Acres with a View

Dear lady who almost drove into me with her silver Camry this morning. I know that Camrys have one hell of a blind spot for the driver, but you better figure that out before you total that pretty new car. Fortunately I was able to brake so we didn’t collide when you switched lanes without signaling, but you will increase your long-term odds of surviving if you start using your turn signals.

LJ-XP (the LiveJournal CrossPoster) is now being maintained by someone other than the developer that originally wrote it.

The most annoying thing about new releases of Wordpress is tracking down the new features. A release notes page off the download page would be nice, but I had to find 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.6 instead.

The PressThis bookmarklet is back, with a lot of new functions. All three of our weblogs upgraded without any problems.

As Jack and I were driving to work this morning, I saw the first McCain bumper sticker. I’ve seen lots of Obama stickers the past few weeks. This discrepancy is especially surprising considering El Paso county consistently votes Republican. The kicker: the bumper sticker was on a car with Virginia license plates. I think McCain has a problem. (Of course, this observation is totally bogus due to selection bias, but I see lots of Bush/Cheney stickers still.)

Last weekend, I went into the paddock to put a halter on Lily so I could lead her out. She was standing too close to the feeder for me to reach her head without stretching from where I was standing by her shoulder. Before I could raise my hand to touch her chest (the signal I give her when I want her to back) she took a step backward so she was in the correct position for me to halter her. I was taken aback: Lily is one of the brighter horses I’ve handled, but it seemed a bit much for her to realize that I couldn’t get to her head easily so she had to help me out.

Back in the early 20th century, Clever Hans was a horse that was purported to do arithmetic and other intellectual tasks. After an investigation, psychologist Oskar Pfungst demonstrated that the horse was actually reacting to the involuntary cues of his trainer, which were not perceptible by human observers. Even more interesting: Pfungst could not suppress the cues when he was handling the horse himself.

So I think what actually happened when I thought about asking Lily to back, I gave her a cue without realizing it, caught by her peripheral vision. Which is rather amazing in and of itself. But then there was a time when I had a hard time remembering the correct aids for the canter when I rode any horse but Hap. Hap didn’t need no stinking canter aids: I thought “canter,” and he cantered.

I have been using mind maps for over twenty years. Here is a Text 2 Mind Map - An online text to mind map converter. No sign-in required.

July 11, 2008 - Click on image for higher resolution version.

If your computer doesn’t generate enough white noise to block out annoying sounds, use SimplyNoise.com to add a little white noise to your environment.

My root canal procedure this morning seems to have been more painful than the general run of such things. (Or else I am just a total wuss.) I did go to work for thirty minutes afterward, then gave it up since I was unable to concentrate and came home. (On the way to work, I kept telling myself to suck it up: people have these things all the time without it being the end of the world.) Fortunately, the Tylenol plus codeine the dentist prescribed took the edge off the pain, and left me nicely fuzzy. Jack brought me home ice cream for supper: I figured I might as well get SOME pleasure from not wanting to open my mouth.

This is the first one I have had, and if I ever need one again, I think they are going to have to sedate me.

It wasn’t love at first sight.

When I first saw the tall, leggy mahogany bay Thoroughbred gelding I thought he was kind of cute, though skinny. And I thought it was a pity that his blaze was so asymmetrical, sliding off to one side of his face.

I was no longer too excited when I went to look at horses, because by then I felt I had looked at every big lame horse in Colorado. Why do people even bother to show horses for sale that are obviously lame? Do they think it won’t be noticed?

In this case the owner had brought the horse by the barn where we were boarding Rags. He was immaculately groomed, and seemed very calm for a Thoroughbred. He also seemed alert, so I doubt he had been drugged. In retrospect, though, I suspect he had already been worked hard at least once that day. And probably had been worked hard every day for the previous week. Maybe the previous month.

The owner started riding him around the arena. I liked the way he moved, though I was a little concerned that he carried his head with a slight twist. After she walked, trotted and cantered the horse around the arena for a while, and even jumped a few small obstacles, she asked me if I wanted to try him.

She was a tiny woman, so we had to put a saddle on the gelding that would fit me. I mounted with a certain sense of caution. From my point of view, one of the worst parts of the horse buying process was having to ride strange horses, sometimes even without a proper introduction.

Within five minutes of trotting and cantering around the arena, I was at war with myself. One part of me was trying to stay objective and cool about this horse. The twist had me worried, because I knew that this sort of thing could be hard to fix in a horse. I also wasn’t all that keen on getting a Thoroughbred. My original guideline to the woman who was acting as my agent had been “Anything but a Thoroughbred, anything but a gray.” I had only reluctantly started looking at Thoroughbreds since we had been coming up dry with other breeds.

The other part of me was saying, “This is my horse. This is MY horse. THIS IS MY HORSE!”

I asked my friend D who was there watching if she would ride the horse, because I wanted to see if she could fix the twist. She couldn’t, but said later that the running martingale on the horse interfered with using the direct rein which might have helped. I also took the horse on a short trail ride, and I cantered him beside D on her big Thoroughbred Havoc. (D was not yet my trainer, but she already had a knack for keeping me calm in situations that would normally worry me. Cantering a strange Thoroughbred in the open was guaranteed to worry me.)

The cool, objective part of me told the owner that I wanted to talk to my agent, and of course we would want a pre-purchase exam if we decided to buy him. The cool, objective part of me knew it was folly to bond to the horse before a vet had even seen him. The other part of me wanted to give her a check on the spot, so she wouldn’t put MY HORSE in her trailer and take him away.

After a very long eight days, Hap came home. At least he wasn’t a gray.

June 29, 2008 - Click on image for higher resolution version.

I spent Sunday morning scribing for the stadium jumping at Abbey Ranch Horse Trials between Palmer Lake and Perry Park.