This is it! The last day of the year, better practice writing 2008 on everything. I just noticed that I have a doctor's appointment in January 2007, I guess the girl that wrote out the card hasn't been practicing. It is a beautiful day for the last day of the year, nice and warm.
We are going to a neighbor's tonight for good food and to ring in the new year.
I have made a few resolutions, but none that involve food or lack of it. One is to add to this blog daily, so this blog will probably have a bunch of useless posts in it that detail my boring life. If you can bear with me until spring it might get exciting when our goats and horses start kidding and foaling. I may even post a few pictures along the way.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Sunday, December 30, 2007
My Year End Rants
After taking care of renewing a domain name, I thought that I might vent some steam here. I have around 28 domain names registered with GoDaddy.com and every time I have to go to that website I get so angry and I always threaten to transfer my names somewhere else!
I know that they make pretty good money and brag about what a quality company that they are and how many customers that they have, so why can't they afford to build a better website?
We live in an area that has no high speed internet connection options, so unless we want to shell out the money for satellite dish service, we are pretty much stuck with dial-up. We get by, sometimes painfully, but there are a few websites that are without excuse.
I can go to many big websites without getting upset, sites like Amazon and eBay are not a problem at all, but GoDaddy, PayPal and the United States Postal Service websites are just impossible.
GoDaddy.com is without question the worst, they take the first place ribbon for being the all time slowest website out there. I hate going there and avoid it at all costs. I guess I need to do some shopping and find another registrar, to save myself from a total melt down.
Why is that site so slow? It takes forever to pull any information from their databases and having to wade through all of the stupid advertising is just ridiculous. Don't they make enough money selling their services? Putting so much advertising on the site makes the whole shopping experience confusing. I really don't understand how they do any business at all with all of the confusion on each page.
If their site is any indication of the speed of their servers, I don't think that I would want to host a website there.
Enough of that, now let's talk about AT & T, the phone company. Since we do only have access to the internet by dial-up and pay each month for phone service, wouldn't you think that we should have a right to a working phone line? My continuing fear is that we would have some kind of emergency and have to depend on our home phone to dial 911.
The static in our line is so bad that you can't keep a internet connection and the disconnects while you are talking on the phone are very annoying. We have just had to adapt by starting each phone conversation with "Now we might get disconnected because we live in a third world country and the phone service isn't very good here." We understood about "dropped calls" before cell phones were even invented.
I will have to admit though, that things are getting much better than they used to be. We used to have to spend weekends and Holidays with no phone service at all, that hasn't happened in a long time.
We have had to call in for repairs so many times that we get a little irritable with the stupid things that we are told each time. Our neighbors are having the same problems and the phone company has even blamed the electric company. Then finally, the last time that a repairman was out, he sat in my house and told me that they just don't know what is causing it, and I do appreciate that kind of honesty. I just wish they would give us a break on our phone bill.
We called repair last Friday the 28th and were told that, "Yes, they could hear the static", then they said that they would have it repaired by January 5th, the next day they called back to find out for sure that we still needed repair and to assure me that they would have it repaired by January 5th, I said something to the affect that that was a long time to go without an internet connection and with a phone that you can barely use, she quickly snapped back that she had said BY January 5th and not ON January 5th, that made me feel much better. In the mean time she wanted to know how I felt about the service that they had provided today.
All in all I will have to say that, AT & T employees are much more intelligent than those people who work in Hospital Billing but that really isn't saying much because the only people that rank lower than Hospital billing employees are Spammers.
I know that they make pretty good money and brag about what a quality company that they are and how many customers that they have, so why can't they afford to build a better website?
We live in an area that has no high speed internet connection options, so unless we want to shell out the money for satellite dish service, we are pretty much stuck with dial-up. We get by, sometimes painfully, but there are a few websites that are without excuse.
I can go to many big websites without getting upset, sites like Amazon and eBay are not a problem at all, but GoDaddy, PayPal and the United States Postal Service websites are just impossible.
GoDaddy.com is without question the worst, they take the first place ribbon for being the all time slowest website out there. I hate going there and avoid it at all costs. I guess I need to do some shopping and find another registrar, to save myself from a total melt down.
Why is that site so slow? It takes forever to pull any information from their databases and having to wade through all of the stupid advertising is just ridiculous. Don't they make enough money selling their services? Putting so much advertising on the site makes the whole shopping experience confusing. I really don't understand how they do any business at all with all of the confusion on each page.
If their site is any indication of the speed of their servers, I don't think that I would want to host a website there.
Enough of that, now let's talk about AT & T, the phone company. Since we do only have access to the internet by dial-up and pay each month for phone service, wouldn't you think that we should have a right to a working phone line? My continuing fear is that we would have some kind of emergency and have to depend on our home phone to dial 911.
The static in our line is so bad that you can't keep a internet connection and the disconnects while you are talking on the phone are very annoying. We have just had to adapt by starting each phone conversation with "Now we might get disconnected because we live in a third world country and the phone service isn't very good here." We understood about "dropped calls" before cell phones were even invented.
I will have to admit though, that things are getting much better than they used to be. We used to have to spend weekends and Holidays with no phone service at all, that hasn't happened in a long time.
We have had to call in for repairs so many times that we get a little irritable with the stupid things that we are told each time. Our neighbors are having the same problems and the phone company has even blamed the electric company. Then finally, the last time that a repairman was out, he sat in my house and told me that they just don't know what is causing it, and I do appreciate that kind of honesty. I just wish they would give us a break on our phone bill.
We called repair last Friday the 28th and were told that, "Yes, they could hear the static", then they said that they would have it repaired by January 5th, the next day they called back to find out for sure that we still needed repair and to assure me that they would have it repaired by January 5th, I said something to the affect that that was a long time to go without an internet connection and with a phone that you can barely use, she quickly snapped back that she had said BY January 5th and not ON January 5th, that made me feel much better. In the mean time she wanted to know how I felt about the service that they had provided today.
All in all I will have to say that, AT & T employees are much more intelligent than those people who work in Hospital Billing but that really isn't saying much because the only people that rank lower than Hospital billing employees are Spammers.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Saying Goodbye
A family member is leaving January 2nd for additional training and then going on to Iraq, we had dinner with him and his family this evening. It is going to be hard for his wife and young son who is so crazy about his Dad. They built a teddy bear together that has a recording of his voice telling his son that he loves him and that he will be home soon. It is dressed in camo and is very cute, he calls it his Daddy Bear. His Daddy won't be coming home until next year around Christmas time.
Another young man that we attend Church with and who has helped us put up hay in the past is going as well, he is not married and has no children but he lost his brother in a tragic auto accident less than a month ago, so you can only imagine how bad this will be for his parents. In a month's time they will be going from having two children in their home to a completely empty nest.
I know this has to be done and I greatly admire those who give their service to this country, but it is very sad for them and their families, a heartbreaking separation, you don't realize how bad it is until it is someone close to you.
Another young man that we attend Church with and who has helped us put up hay in the past is going as well, he is not married and has no children but he lost his brother in a tragic auto accident less than a month ago, so you can only imagine how bad this will be for his parents. In a month's time they will be going from having two children in their home to a completely empty nest.
I know this has to be done and I greatly admire those who give their service to this country, but it is very sad for them and their families, a heartbreaking separation, you don't realize how bad it is until it is someone close to you.
Starving Horses
In my previous post I said that many horse owners in this area would be in trouble, I had two calls this morning about give-away horses. One call was from a friend who heard about someone wanting to give a horse away because they can no longer afford to feed it. The other call was someone who's Grandfather had been given a starving horse who's pasture mate had starved to death. The people who gave him the horse said that they just couldn't find any hay and what they did find they couldn't afford.
We do have a local sale barn that you used to be able to take your unwanted horses to, but now if you take them they don't even get an opening bid unless they are an exceptional horse. But spring will come and hay will be available again, then the horses that survive this winter will be better fed next winter.
I would however recommend to anyone who can no longer afford to keep your horses and cannot give them away or sell them, to please take them to your local Humane Society instead of turning them loose on Government and State owned land.
We do have a local sale barn that you used to be able to take your unwanted horses to, but now if you take them they don't even get an opening bid unless they are an exceptional horse. But spring will come and hay will be available again, then the horses that survive this winter will be better fed next winter.
I would however recommend to anyone who can no longer afford to keep your horses and cannot give them away or sell them, to please take them to your local Humane Society instead of turning them loose on Government and State owned land.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
2007 Slipping Away
2007 wasn't that bad mind you, but I think that I am ready to see it go on down the road. We had a terrible drought this past summer, the worst that I have ever seen in my 50 years. Our pastures turned to dust and no one had any hay to sell, they all put it in their own barns in order to charge outrageous prices to desperate animal owners this winter.
We did end up trading horses for hay, so we are going to make it through. Others weren't so lucky and will be in real trouble before spring. We are feeding a lot of grain this winter, which is something that we usually don't do. The idea is to feed grain, so they won't eat as much hay but it isn't working very well, they are all just getting fat. We are going to have to find a way to limit their time with the hay bales.
After experiencing this dry summer, I did say that I would never complain about rain again, so far I am doing quite well. It has been a very wet late fall and early winter. I have just about had to quit feeding all together because of the mud. My husband is doing all of my chores to prevent me from further injuring my already injured back. I hate not being able to get out but I am not complaining about the rain or the mud, I will just say that I really like cold weather and frozen ground.
We did end up trading horses for hay, so we are going to make it through. Others weren't so lucky and will be in real trouble before spring. We are feeding a lot of grain this winter, which is something that we usually don't do. The idea is to feed grain, so they won't eat as much hay but it isn't working very well, they are all just getting fat. We are going to have to find a way to limit their time with the hay bales.
After experiencing this dry summer, I did say that I would never complain about rain again, so far I am doing quite well. It has been a very wet late fall and early winter. I have just about had to quit feeding all together because of the mud. My husband is doing all of my chores to prevent me from further injuring my already injured back. I hate not being able to get out but I am not complaining about the rain or the mud, I will just say that I really like cold weather and frozen ground.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
So Glad It's Over
Well Christmas has come and gone, so I can resume my normal life. I didn't get much for Christmas but I wasn't expecting much. All I asked for was 3 Barred Rock Hens but I think that I might be getting more than that, along with some Rhode Island Reds. We haven't gone to pick them up yet, so I am not sure how many there are.
Chickens are handy to have around for more reasons than just eggs, they keep the insect population down. I bought nine young hens and a rooster this summer and all but two of the hens ended up being roosters. I considered butchering them myself because I thought it might be something that I needed to be able to do, but after going online, reading the "How to's" and seeing the pictures, I decided that I wasn't ready to take that step yet. So all of the roosters ended up going to the local Sale Barn and I at least got my initial investment back.
Our biggest Christmas surprise was discovered Christmas morning after the bright full moon of Christmas Eve. Our Stallion had gotten what he had wished for from Santa Claus, he had made it into the big pasture with all of the other horses. We don't know how he did it, he had to have gone through two fences but no fences were damaged. I guess Santa just picked him up with his sleigh and carried him over. It was a Christmas nightmare for all of the geldings in the big pasture, who have missing hair, gashes and cuts. But I guess it pleased all of the unbred mares, the bred mares didn't care either way.
Chickens are handy to have around for more reasons than just eggs, they keep the insect population down. I bought nine young hens and a rooster this summer and all but two of the hens ended up being roosters. I considered butchering them myself because I thought it might be something that I needed to be able to do, but after going online, reading the "How to's" and seeing the pictures, I decided that I wasn't ready to take that step yet. So all of the roosters ended up going to the local Sale Barn and I at least got my initial investment back.
Our biggest Christmas surprise was discovered Christmas morning after the bright full moon of Christmas Eve. Our Stallion had gotten what he had wished for from Santa Claus, he had made it into the big pasture with all of the other horses. We don't know how he did it, he had to have gone through two fences but no fences were damaged. I guess Santa just picked him up with his sleigh and carried him over. It was a Christmas nightmare for all of the geldings in the big pasture, who have missing hair, gashes and cuts. But I guess it pleased all of the unbred mares, the bred mares didn't care either way.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Who am I?
- Wife of a wonderful husband
- Mother of two grown children
- Mother-in-law to my children's spouses
- Grandmother of perfect Grandchildren
- Certified Babysitter
- Servant of my Lord, Jesus Christ
- Admirer of a huge herd of horses
- Shepherd to a small herd of dairy goats
- Keeper of a few chickens
- Gatherer of eggs
- Milker of goats
- Food provider for my pets, herds, flocks and Family
- Shoveler of manure
- Microscopic Fecal examiner
- Equine and Caprine Midwife
- Amateur Graphologist
- Amateur with a crochet hook and knitting needles
- Owner of my Great-Grandmother's Spinning Wheel
- Future Yarn Spinner
- Animal Lover
- Killer of any animal that threatens my pets, herds, flocks or Family
- Expert with a .22 rifle
- Fencing Expert (repairing broken fences)
- Knot Expert
- Designer and Caretaker of around 20 Websites
- To be continued....
It's Christmas
Here I sit waiting for my Sugar Cream Pies to come out of the oven. I already have my Apple Pie done, I started it on Christmas Eve but somehow it is now Christmas Day and 2:00 in the morning. I need to get some sleep! When I was young Christmas was only one day and it was glorious. Now Christmas starts in October with the shopping and ends sometime in January when everything has been paid for.
I decided since everything that I can do for Christmas has already been done, I have some free time, so why not start a blog? I can always think of things that I would like to say in a blog, like having a diary to keep track of my life. Since my memory is fading more every day that I live, keeping a diary might serve a useful purpose. So, today starts a new adventure in my very small world, I talk to myself all the time anyway, so this won't be too much different than that.
I decided since everything that I can do for Christmas has already been done, I have some free time, so why not start a blog? I can always think of things that I would like to say in a blog, like having a diary to keep track of my life. Since my memory is fading more every day that I live, keeping a diary might serve a useful purpose. So, today starts a new adventure in my very small world, I talk to myself all the time anyway, so this won't be too much different than that.
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