Hey Babe,
Finally had a decent night sleep last night, thank goodness! Started the day by running over to EV Hay and picking up five bales, which is all I needed to get me through to my trip on Monday. Did some work on the trail planning for the upcoming Taste of Goethe, including a short trip down to Connie's to discuss the options, a little bit more on my tax prep, and started to do a couple of things in preparation for my week away next week, including dumping my black water, and starting up my generator. Thought I was having a problem with it, it kept starting but then cutting out immediately, but then I remembered how it does that when the propane pressure is low (and oil pressure, but that was fine), so I opened another propane tank and that solved the problem, thank goodness. Once I shut the generator off, I turned the propane tank off again, no need to run that until I need to. I still have two full tanks, so I'll refill the other two once they're completely empty. When I have electricity, it seems like a tank of propane lasts forever! I also checked the fluids in the truck, everything was good except the power steering fluid, which needed topping off. I'm hoping that's just from normal use after the last repair, and not another leak somewhere. It wasn't empty, just low, so hopefully it's all good, I'll just have to keep an eye on it. Did some more trail work on the Suwannee trails as well, and chatted with some new campers for a bit. Finally settled down for the evening, with a Northern Exposure and a fun adult rom-com, something about A Grand Romantic Gesture. Good work in that one. Now it's time for my usual, tea, Spanish (Day 654!), shower and bed! Love you, Sweetie! Good night!

Hiya Sweetie,
Had a terrible night sleep, still trying to get used to DST, yuck! Didn't get to sleep until after 2:00, was up around 9:00, Did my chores, then even before breakfast I decided to get a couple of small jobs done. I put a new handle on the gray water tank valve, it broke off a couple of weeks ago. I had one handy that I had bought for the black water tank, but could never get it to fit, but it worked fine on the gray water tank. Then I finally tackled cleaning the battery terminals, and boy, did they need it! I used a wire brush and sandpaper, and one cable end needed tightening, and all of the electrical tape needed replacing, and I put a little vaseline on everything to hopefully keep it from doing that again! A good job done, though, albeit long overdue. Finally came in for breakfast, or should I say brunch since it was close to 11:00, then decided the task for the day would be to get my bookkeeping ready to do my taxes. I downloaded this year's TurboTax, which took a couple of hours with my slow connection and all the updates, but while it was doing that, I went through all my accounts and got them straightened out so the actual doing of taxes will be fairly straight-forward. I was going to do them tomorrow, but I realized I don't have enough hay, so I'll have to pick some up tomorrow, and if I'm going out, I might as well get all my shopping done while I'm out. Not that I have to get that much, but I need enough to get me through next week since I'll be swamped with work starting on Thursday or Friday. That took me until about 5:30, so I fed the horses and then had dinner and a Northern Exposure, followed by an old black and white movie with Anne Baxter and Raymond Burr from 1953, The Blue Gardenia. I love watching old films that have great story lines, without all the overt violence, language and soft porn that most modern movies seem to have. Amazon Prime keeps presenting me with rom-coms and kids movies, which are about the only modern movies that fit that description, but I'm not into kid movies, and rom-coms all have pretty much the same plot, so they get boring. Oh, well, maybe I'll watch more old black and whites! Anyway, tea's made, ready for shower and bed. Good night, darlin'! Love you!

Hey Darlin',
I truly hate Daylight Savings Time. I wish it had never been invented, and I can't understand why we still have it. It serves no purpose. Well, despite "losing" an hour of sleep, which I made up by sleeping an hour later anyway, I woke up energized and decided to get some odd jobs done. Laundry, of course, my usual Sunday chore, and I also reseal the base of the toilet again. I used that supposed impermeable stuff one of my brothers recommended, so naturally, it didn't last, so I peeled it off and redid it with some silicon, using my new generic Dremel to clean it properly. Did some planning on the Taste of Goethe Trails for next weekend, considered changing out the panel on my inverter but had a few questions about some things, so I spoke to Jo's electrically-minded husband Jeff about it. Figure I'll clean the terminals before I put in the new control panel, and I'll have to reconfigure it a bit differently, but I didn't want to get into all of that today. Finally saddle up Apollo for a 5 1/2 mile ride, and today, decided to let Lola come along. I've been trying hard to keep her from overexerting herself, but I'm getting worried that she's going to be worse off without any exercise. She seemed to be a bit better today, not perfect, but she kept up fine and didn't seem to limp very much, though she's still not quite walking in a completely normally, but that might just be the arthritis in her hocks. It's better for her to run in a straight line that jumping and leaping when she's fetching, so hopefully she'll be okay in the morning. I'm almost out of pills, but Jo is going to try to arrange an acupuncture appointment for her next week, which would be great! Apollo did really well, we jogged a lot, and he didn't have any pig scares, so it was uneventful, but fun. It was a gorgeous day! Nice to just get out there and ride! I gave Apollo a good rinse and combed out some of his winter coat before hanging him back on the highline. Then a couple drove in for a day ride, Mary and Ed, and we had a nice chat. They'd never been here before, so I suggested a good trail. Turned out, she didn't get back until after dark, went out on a bunch of other trails, but finally made it back okay. She might be coming back with friends tomorrow, and I offered to ride with them. It's either that or start to do my taxes... Hmmm, ride or taxes? No-brainer there! Finally settled in for the evening, later than usual (did I mention I HATE DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME!!), be in bed soon, but later than usual at the rate I'm going. Good night, babe! Love you!

Hi Babe,
I was so wound up last night that I couldn't sleep. I read for hours, then was worried about my phone going dead, looked up what might be the cause of the problem and learned that sometimes dirt just gets into the port, so I tried cleaning it, but I'm sure the port has been pushed back inside and that's why my cords aren't working properly. It was after 2:00 before I finally slept, so I spent the day feeling tired. After morning chores and breakfast, I read some more, even crawling back up into bed and nodding off occasionally. Finally mustered enough energy to drive over the Jo's to pick up the ribbons for marking the trails at the upcoming Taste of Goethe. We visited for awhile, and Lola had a little play date, though we tried hard to not let her run around too much so that she wouldn't reinjure her leg. Before I left, she offered to let me borrow her extra wireless charger, so that I would worry less about my phone going dead. That may be the answer, if no one steps up to replace my phone, though I have to remove it from it's case to make it work, which is kind of a pain. Finally got back, fed the horses and settled down for the evening, with a Northern Exposure and an interesting movie with Robert Redford (who also wrote it), Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise about the War on Terror. I've been having wine in the evening the last few nights and haven't been sleeping well, so it's back to Sleepytime tea tonight. It's been warm enough to need to use the air conditionng the last few nights, to cool it down before going to bed. Rain coming in tonight, though, that's supposed to make it better by tomorrow. Winter is gone, daylight savings begins tonight (boo, hiss, hate daylight savings time!!), and things are getting positively toasty here these days. Hoping for a better night sleep tonight! Love you, sweetie! Good night!

Hiya Sweetie,
Didn't sleep that great, did my chores and breakfast, then loaded up Flash and drove down to Tidewater to put up the permanent markers on the new trails. I was a little afraid that they wouldn't be quite what I expected, and unfortunately, it was even worse than I feared. The trail that got mowed was a lot different than the trail I marked. Several areas that were used were areas that I intentionally avoided because I knew they would be a problem after they were mowed. One section where I specifically said I didn't want to knock a whole bunch of baby pines down were razed by the tractor, forcing me to do a lot of cleanup that I hadn't counted on. A bunch of areas had scrub palms that I wanted to avoid because you can never get rid of the stumps, they'll grow back, and they usually have a big hole in them, and a lot of trees I had planned to use for markers where no longer in the right place, and so on, and so on. There were a lot of markers that were obviously missed, and my instructions to "stay right of the markers" was all but ignored. I knew I should have insisted on being there, but Rick was pretty adamant that I not be there, and I didn't want to argue, but now I regret not insisting, because now, to do it right, it will take another four steps to correct, even if I can convince them to. Now I'll have to put up temp markers again, get it mowed properly, then put up permanent markers, and then take down the permanent markers that would now be on the wrong trail. Sigh... We had also decided to do another, short section of the trail to move that off the road, and I can't even begin to explain what the hell he did there. I had to look at my GPS when I got home to figure it out on Google Earth! He was supposed to just cut a new trail about 20-30 yards in from the road, paralleling it, but all he did was cut a small loop away from the trail, then backtracked and looped back into the trail closer to camp, nowhere near the road. Sigh... I took the time to mark the correct path with ribbons, though whether he'll ever fix it, I don't know. It was a very frustrating day, a lot of work that's unfinished, leaving a lot more work to do, and I'm running out of time, so it may be next season before it gets done. And then I discovered that the new phone cords I got in the mail yesterday screwed up my charging port, and now I can't seem to get my phone to charge properly. Same thing that happened with my phone a couple of years ago. I paid $8 for new cords, and I'm probably going to have to spend $175 to get a new phone. Sign... Well, enough griping, it doesn't get me anywhere. Jo had a bad day, too, her second horse Peaches failed to get vetted in, so she couldn't even ride her scheduled 25 today. A dark day in the neighborhood! Settled down to a glass of wind and a shrimp burrito, but still feeling pretty low. Looking forward to a nice shower, I got really dirty today, then bed. Grrrr. Good night, darlin'. Love you.

Hiya Darlin',
Well, my whole day had been planned around going down to help with the mowing of the new alternate purple trail, but Rick called to say it wasn't necessary and would do it without me, so my morning suddenly cleared up. I ended up just killing time until I went over to the FITS ride to crew for Jo, so I went over about 1:45, hung around until she came in, which was later than she figured, but I mostly just visited and read for the afternoon. She finally made it after 4:00, I helped until she went back on the trail, then I came home and fed the horses, had dinner, and went back around 8:00. She was doing the 65-mile today, and she was just coming in as I pulled up, she caught up to some 75-milers that knew the trail, so that energized her and Luna, and made it much easier since she didn't have to be on the lookout for markers, so she made good time. Luna passed her vet check, and I helped Jo get packed up. Got back to camp about 9:00 (I'm only two minutes away), then settled down to my Spanish lesson, blog, a glass of wine, and the last part of a Northern Exposure I didn't get to finish before I left. Won't be long out of bed, for sure! Good night, babe! Love you!

Hey Babe,
A good night sleep, worked on my shoulder in the morning, did a little computer work, then headed over to HQ to see if Jo's husband wanted to play Smokey the Bear at the upcoming Taste of Goethe, but he's a rather small guy and the costume is built for someone the size os Sasquatch, so that's a no. Then Rick and I headed down to Tidewater to look at the changes I want to make on the purple trail, though we didn't have time to do it today, so we'll get a start on it tomorrow. We decided to not only do the half mile section that's the worst, but that there was no reason not to do the short, 100 yard section as well. We made some plans for that, then I ran into town, got my hair cut, which it desperately needed, and did some shopping so I'll be hopefully stocked up enough to not have to shop again before heading up to Suwannee. Got back to camp around 5:00, wasn't long before I was feeding the horses and myself, and settling down for dinner. Started to watch a movie but didn't like it, so switched back to a Northern Exposure. Won't be long out of bed tonight! Good night, sweetheart! Love you!

Hi Sweetie,
Didn't do too much today, just worked on my computer, read for a bit, met up with Jo for lunch, made arrangements with Rick to work on the new alt-Purple trail tomorrow, shopped for a few things on Amazon, picked up some aluminum cans at Helen's, then settled down for the evening to a nice little rom-com and a Northern Exposure, and now that the rain has finally come in, looking forward to a quick shower and a good night sleep! Love you, darlin'! Good night!