Hi Sweetie,
It rained most of the night, so earplugs went in, and I took a bouple of ibuprofen, but it still took awhile to get to sleep. Woke up with the alarm at 7:15, only to get a message from Chelle a few minutes later to change our start time from 9:00 to 11:00, in the hopes the rain would be cleared out by then. That suited me fine, I crawled back into bed and worked on my shoulder for a bit. My knee seemed a bit better, but in hindsight, it was probably the ibuprofen. Anyway, finally got up, did my chores, had breakfast, and headed out, first to the Dollar store to look for more stakes, but they didn't have any, then over to Val's where I started in on marking out the various sites and areas we are using. There was an obnoxious drizzle most of the day, so I didn't get the ground paint on like I wanted, but I did get the flags in on all of the FEI sites. That just about killed my sore knee, I was limping really badly by the time I did all that measuring and walking around. I still have a lot of work to do on it, but it didn't make sense to do it in the rain, and my knee hurt so much I just couldn't walk on it anymore. Chelle and I went around and put up as many signs as we had, me driving the quad and her pounding and stapling the signs. Got all that done, so we drove into Williston to pick up some big signs she had made that will also need to go in tomorrow. Finally dropped her off (she directed me in the back way, which was all slippery sand, so now my truck looks like it's had a mud bath!), and got home after 5:00. Just had ramen for dinner and settled down for the evening. I decided since ice didn't seem to do much good on my knee, tonight I used the heating pad, hoping that helps more, though I doubt it. I forgot to turn the hot tub on this morning, so it's just a hot shower tonight, and an early bedtime! Good night, darlin'! Love you!

Hiya Darlin'!
I had hoped to go to a local obstacle course for a "Sunday Funday," but my left knee has been bothering me a bit lately (I twisted it somewhere along the line), so I decided to give it the overdue RICE treatment today (rest, ice, compression, elevation) to see if that helps. I need to discern if this is a temporary problem or one that will lead to another knee surgery. Don't want to be lame on my Yellowstone Adventure in August! So I spent the day doing laundry and treating my knee, and by the time I got out of the hot tub, where I did a little massaging of it, it was feeling better. Some ibuprofen tonight just to finish it off, and hopefully tomorrow I'll almost as good as new! Not a moment too soon, I have a VERY busy week ahead of me, working with the Fun In The Sun Endurance Ride. Just need a good night sleep and all will be good! Good night, baby! Love you!

Hey Babe!
Didn't sleep well last night, woke up to cold temps, though not as bad as yesterday, but I dressed in many layers, including long underwear, in anticipation of riding with Jo this morning. I decided that since we were mostly walking with her new mare, and only going for a short ride because we were both going to Chi University for equine manipulation sessions (we volunteered our horses for the students to learn on), that I would take Apollo instead of Flash, which ended up working out just fine. Nikki was still acting up too much for Jo to trust her at a trot, so we walked for three miles, but did get her through a lot of puddles, and the deep spring on the blue trail! So that was something. Apollo did a couple of jigs whenever he smelled pigs (we never saw any), but was otherwise well-behaved. Got back a bit after 11:15, which Jo thought was plenty of time because she thought her first session was at 12:30, turned out to be 11:30, so they had to use a standby horse. Very unlike her! Anyway, she headed out quickly and I brushed both horses, forgoing a planned bath for lack of time, Art showed up right at noon, so we were off by 12:15, arriving at Chi plenty early. In fact, they ended up starting late (likely because of the late start on the first session), but everything went swimmingly after that. I had originally scheduled one horse for the 2nd session and the other for the third, but they had a cancellation and wondered if we wanted to both to do the second session, which meant we would be done by about 3:30, which would give us time to go to the evening session of a hunter/jumper Grand Prix at WEC. So Art handled Flash, I handled Apollo, and they both did very well, as usual. Flash got a little antsy toward the end, after standing around for two hours, I can't blame him, but otherwise, it went great. We got back to camp, I put the horses away and changed, Art went to his camp to get a charger for his phone, then loaded up Lola and we headed off to WEC. Had dinner at that little Mexican place, which was crowded and slow as usual, but we enjoyed half our meals and took the rest with us for later. We found our other friends and settled in to watch the show. Lola didn't know what to make of it, and barked a couple of times, but eventually settled down. She even crawled into both our laps for awhile after she tired out. Got back to camp around 9:30, got in my hot tub and shower, and now I'm relaxing with my Sleepytime tea. Later than usual, but it was a great day! Can't remember the last time I actually did three different things in a day! Lots of fun! time for bed now, so good night, sweetie! Love you!

Hey Darlin',
Spent the morning after chores doing a bit of cleanup on the inside of the truck in anticipation of the weekend. I'm scheduled to take both horses over to Chi University Saturday afternoon, and Art might be coming with me, so I needed to clear it out well enough for a passenger. Then Logan came by and we had a good serious talk about all of the issues that I've been hearing about from the neighborhood, particularly about their lack of communication when it comes to have a prescribed burn. Evidently there was a woman out with a young horse and she got caught behind the fire line and was near panic about getting out safely. It wasn't long after that when I received an email talking about a prescribed burning for tomorrow! So that worked, and I hope they keep that up! We also devised a plan for tracking down the evil one who is changing the markings on the trails during events, hopefully that will lead somewhere. Then in the afternoon I drove down to Dave's Auto World in Inglis. He did all the brake work on my truck last year and I wanted him to check them again so see how they fared over the summer when I had no brakes on the trailer. Turns out they did, indeed, overheat enough for the pads to be in bad shape, and even the calipers had hard wear on them, but Dave managed to switch those out under warranty (very generous!), and put new pads on, so like-new brakes again. Can't wait to try them out with working brakes on my trailer and the new brake controller! That should be a nice change! He also recharged my AC which had recently quit. There's a small leak, but we need to see how bad it is. It might last a year, or a month or a week, we'll see. Stopped at Tractor Supply for horse feed, Walmart for a few items, and got back to camp after 5:00. Put everything away, fed the horses and put on their heavy blankets because it's supposed to get near freezing overnight, and settled down for the evening, as usual! Heading to be shortly. Good night, babe! Love you!

Hiya Babe,
Getting back into the swing of things with my sleep cycle, thank goodness, so I had another good night sleep. After not hearing from the trailer place by 9:30 (they promised to call at 9:00 after their no show yesterday), I called and learned someone was on their way. Of course, he went to the wrong place, but called me and I set him straight. When he got here, he did manage to solve most of my problems, but one is remaining, the giant openings they left around the replacement compartment door, because he wasn't told about it, so didn't bring the materials necessary to fix it. But I no longer have a leaking kitchen drain and my outside speakers now work. While he was working, I got out the tractor and move the picnic table that was at the end of the pavilion driveway. I have an old friend coming down to visit, and I've arranged to borrow another friend's LQ horse trailer for her to stay in here at the trailhead with me, but the table was in the way. I never liked where it was anyway, and this finally gave me the catalyst to get it done. I'm much happier with its placement now! I needed the tractor because this picnic table is incredibly heavy, enough to tip my tractor off its wheels if I didn't grab it right! Seriously, it must weigh about 800 lbs.! It would take six big guys to move it, I'm sure. Anyway, that's done now. Not long after the trailer guy left it started to rain, so I spent the afternoon doing some computer work, then decided that a rainy day deserved a movie and popcorn, so settled in nicely for the rest of the day and evening. Won't be long out of bed, I'm enjoying getting back to an earlier cycle. Good night, sweetie! Love you!

Hey Sweetie,
Got to bed a bit late, but had a good night sleep. While I spent the morning waiting for the trailer repair guy to show up, as was promised to me yesterday, I did some odd jobs. I took all the TOG signs and pulled them apart, then restapled them in a way that will allow us to reuse the stake and sheet protector by just slipping in new signs. Ended up with 36 signs like that. It wasn't as easy as it sounds, though, because first I had to fix my hammer stapler, which jammed up on me last time I used it, and it took some doing to figure out how to unjam it (Youtube is my friend!), and even with instructions, it proved to be a bit more difficult until I mastered the technique. It continued to jam for quite awhile after every couple of staples, but it finally seemed to settle down and I was able to get the last bunch done with less trouble. Rick showed up just as I was finishing, so I enlisted him to help me replace the firehose on the pumphouse so that we could refill tanks more easily for FITS in a couple of weeks. Not that I needed his help, but he looked like he needed something to do, so he moved his truck over and I stood on it. That was about it. After awhile, I headed back over to Val's to meet with Chelle so we could drive around the property on a UTV and figure out exactly what signs we needed and how many. Got back to camp after 5:00, fixed my dinner, did my evening chores as usual, yada yada yada, and I'll be ready for bed shortly! Good night, my darlin'! Love you!

Hiya Darlin',
After a couple hours of housekeeping, I spent most of the day working on my Yellowstone Adventure plans, booking a hotel room for both before and after the pack trip. I've decided to stay on for a few days after the pack trip so that I can toodle around all the spots that are the tourist attractions that I won't see on the pack trip, just to cover all my bases. I remember we went there once and drove around, stopped at Old Faithful but I can't remember if we stayed and actually watched the geyser go off. I've been doing a lot of reading and research on the area, and there's a lot more to see, so I want to try to do as much as I can. I remember how we hated how commercial it was, and that was 30+ years ago! I can only imagine that it's even worse now, but what the heck, I don't imagine I'll ever go back again, and it's a bucket list item, so I might as well do it up right! Not much left on my bucket list these days! We already did just about everything we ever wanted to do! Anyway, in the afternoon I went to a meeting over at Val's to do more FITS planning, didn't get back until nearly 6:00, so it was all about feeding horses, having dinner and doing my usual routine. Back to bed soon! Good night, baby! Love you!

Hiya Babe,
Had a decent night sleep, got up to do chores and breakfast, then went back up to bed to read and doze for awhile. Finally came downstairs again, and spent the entire day in forced rest mode, reading and watching a movie. I woke up with so many aches and pains, all due to being over-tired, that I knew I just had to have a day when I did nothing, and so I did! By the time I got done with my hot tub and shower, pretty much all of the aches were gone, so mission accomplished! I have a couple of busy days ahead, so I'm glad I took the day off, but it was hard, because I really need to do some housekeeping, but it's just going to have to wait until Sunday, when it's supposed to rain and I can stay inside guilt-free. Heading to bed shortly, after tea and shortbread! Good night, sweetie! Love you!

Hiya Darlin',
Finally got a decent night sleep and woke up a bit more refreshed, but after another long day, I'm back to feeling exhausted again. The day started early, with a 9:00 dentist appointment to get fitted for a crown on a broken molar, followed by a trip to Tractor Supply for propane and horse feed, only to be disappointed that the Dunnellon store didn't have the Balancer I needed, despite the fact that a couple of weeks ago I was assured they would be getting another shipment in, which meant I had to drive to Williston to get some. I got fuel and went shopping at Walmart for my usual bi-monthly shopping trip, the headed north the Williston to get the rest of the horse feed I needed. From there, I drove up to Watermelon Pond to flag the spot where I want the safety sign post to go in, which will save me a trip with Rick, as I'm hoping he'll finish putting the last few posts in. Next was Bailey Mine Trailhead, where I did the same thing. Finally got back to camp late in the afternoon, feeling like I needed a nap, but then got involved with a camper to help them understand the value of Avenza trail app. Not long afterward I headed down to Willards for a Taste of Goethe debrief, learned that we set an attendance record of 240 people, with 50 of them registering the same day. All things considered, I think it went pretty well, with just a few glitches to be expected with unprecedented numbers like that, and the notes from each of the board members mostly focused on the same issues, so we're all on the same page. Didn't get back until about 9:00, took my hot tub and shower, now I'm having tea and am ready for bed soon! Another early start tomorrow! Good night, baby! Love you!