Hay, house, horse

I got a ton of grass hay delivered today. Same stuff I've been feeding, from the same farmer. I traded back four of my five bales of alfalfa mix, too - I'm saving one bale for rides, but there's just no way I'll ever feed up five bales of alfalfa in a year! Much less in three months.

The farmer was perfectly happy to take it back and gave me full credit for it. He's got a real love/hate reputation in the horse community - I've met several people who can't stand him and swear they'll never use him again, but I've had nothing but good experiences with him and his hay. There's one moldy flake about every 10 bales, which seems like a fine ratio to me.

I still had this fall's receipt laying in the barn. My hay went up $.25/bale (100 lb bales) over the winter. Seems fair - if I'd had the money to buy a full year's worth (and wanted to take up that much space in the barn) I'd have saved a little money; as it is he kept it barn-stored all winter and I paid an extra $5. (I'm pretty sure the delivery charge went up, but that's to be expected with $4/gallon gas.)

I also had a realtor/property manager come look at the house. We should be able to rent it out for a tiny profit or a tiny loss, which is ok either way. There aren't a lot of small rental horse properties in Reno, which will help. I need to finish what I'm working on and do a few things I hadn't thought of, but nothing enormous. I'm painting the Dr. Seuss room, and I've primed the trim in the cat room. I need to replace the broken double gates with some new fence, and do something about the deck above where the pool used to be - which will lead to repairing/replacing a section of very rickety fence by that corner of the deck. Right before I vacate, I'll get some carpet cleaner guys in here - they can clean the carpets, stretch the lumpy den carpet, and patch the little hole by the door in the blue bedroom. Of course I have to get the bent garage door panel replaced. And the PM said, gasp, that I should replace the closet doors in the master bedroom!

When we bought the house we were appalled at the 8' sliding mirrored closet doors. We immediately referred to them as the Porn Doors and I had those things down and out before we even moved in. (Redneck admission: they are still leaning up against the side of the house. Keep forgetting to offer them for free on CL or take them to the dump.) I know I took the tracks to the metal recycling place, so there's really no way to reinstall the Original Porn Doors. What a pity. :rolleyes: I will measure the gap and price out sliders or folders at HD and install whatever sounds easiest in a couple months.

So what do you prefer? It's a wide shallow closet, not a full walk-in or a deep narrow closet. Mirrored doors, plain doors, folding doors, no doors - what would you do? We prefer having no doors at all, but maybe that's unusual!


Horse: Dixie is fine fine fine. She is getting curious about why I'm ignoring her. I haven't told her that we're going to try the 50 at High Desert this weekend! She's mostly shed out, and I have a Ride Slow Electrolyte Heavy plan. HD has an away vet check, which might help us - the 50s ride out for 30 miles, eat lunch and vet, then ride back for 20. I think that might work better psychologically for her than riding quite far enough thank you, coming back to camp, and then being expected to leave again. I'm going to keep an eye on my lap speed on the GPS and try to stay around 5.5 average and shoot to get to the lunch check no earlier than 1 pm - there's a shorter hold at 15 miles but I'm not sure for how long.

Since it's all away from camp, Cersei gets to stay home. It would be a very very long boring day for her - she might as well be bored on the couch. M will come by and feed her and check on the rest of the critters.

I have an equine nutrition video to review, but I just haven't had time. If it's cool I'll do a giveaway. I will probably be in the perfect mood to watch it on Sunday!

I have gone back to glamorous work to fuel my extravagant lifestyle of e-rides and broken shit around the house. Yesterday I folded 432 sheets of paper in a very precise fashion. (I didn't actually count, but I was so bored that I did the math to figure it out.) Tomorrow I get to fold more paper! Then a month long paralegal temp thing which I somehow landed even though I refused to work on Friday. Look, money's nice and all, but I have priorities.