Author: Elaine

Lily and Rags

With considerable trepidation, I brought home Rags yesterday to join Smoke and Lily. I put Lily in a stall so she could meet Rags over the gate, and flinched when Lily squealed, struck and half reared to impress Rags. Rags seemed more intrigued than offended. Later, when I let Lily and Rags out of their stalls after their evening meal, heels flew in all directions, and I was only slightly relieved when I noticed that the two horses seemed to maintain at least one horse length between them when they kicked. Although the night was chilly, I left the bedroom window open so I could listen for sounds of fighting in the horse field.

This morning, they were still displaying enough snarkiness that I carried a whip as I handled the horses, to discourage them if they got carried away while they were next to me. A careful inspection showed no signs of impact injuries or injury caused lameness, so I decided they were adjusting. I saw almost no signs of aggression when I fed this evening. Jack let them out of their stalls when they were done eating their concentrate. I watched from the window and they all acted as if they had known each other for years.

It is probably too soon to be sure, but Lily may end up as the dominant horse. Without making a big deal of it, Rags drifted around her to get to a pile of hay, rather than driving her off from the one she was eating. I’ve never cared much how herd hierarchies work themselves out, as long as they are reasonably stable so the horses aren’t continually stressed. However Rags has run this field for quite a few years now, and I will feel slightly sorry if he is displaced by a redhead with an attitude.

Postal Confirmation

I may have been the last to learn this, but I just found out that the confirmation site for the United States Postal Service allows you to request status email to three names when you put in your confirmation number. I sent something priority mail to Nevada on Monday, and I just received the notice that it was delivered this morning.

Firefox and Gmail Loading Page Icon

A few days ago, I noticed that when I looked at my gmail account, the icon indicating that the page is loading never stopped spinning, even when I clicked the “stop loading this page” icon. I wrote a bug report to Google, and then decided to do a little googling and see if perhaps it was a Firefox problem instead. (The problem may or may not have been related to my upgrade to Firefox 0.9.2 on September 3rd.)

I suspected I had a Javascript problem, and someone mentioned clearning the cache as solving a Javascript problem. I cleared both cache and cookies, and exited from Firefox completely. When I started Firefox again, the problem was fixed.

Although I think everyone who wants a gmail invite has one at this point, I have a few to give out. Send an email to en01 at stardel dot com and I will invite you.

Wood stove

For the past three years, a wood stove has been taking up an inordinate amount of room in our mudroom. Before that time, it had lived in our living room, where it was the backup source of heat for our house. Since a free standing wood stove that one never uses takes up a large amount of room, we had it uninstalled after complications failed to arise during the calendar change to 2000. Prior to that time, the stove worked fine: though it tended to render the living room uninhabitable due to excessive heat production.

A wood stove is not a very portable item. Despite this, I decided I would attempt to sell it at a garage sale my friend is holding this Friday. Yesterday, while I wrung my hands and kept out of the way, Jack managed to manhandle the stove onto the dolly, and moved it to the edge of the garage. On Thursday, we will load it into our stock trailer, and I will haul it to the garage sale. My friend thinks that if anyone buys the stove, it will be a good old boy with his own pickup truck and set of burly friends to manhandle it into its new home. However, since it will be in my stock trailer, I could possibly deliver it given the buyer has burly friends.

I keep wandering out to our mudroom to gloat over the newly liberated space. Anyone in Colorado Springs need a wood stove?

Zinnia

Zinnia
Most of the zinnias that I planted didn’t survive, but the hardiest ones were over-achievers, with huge blooms that practically assault the eye.

Artist Trading Cards in Denver

I met several friends at the Core New Art Space for the September Artist Trading Card swap today. The two women who persuaded me to go in May (including the writer of Connections and I met a friend whom I had invited since I thought she would enjoy the experience. She did. After an hour or so of swapping cards, we had lunch at a nearby Mexican restaurant. As we ate, we perused each other’s treasures, from this and past swaps.