Old friend

Do you all get those annoying emails from classmates dot com where they swear someone is looking for you? Well, I went to the site, and looked around. Nobody was looking for me at all. Boo. While I was there, I searched for my best friend from high school. I didn't find her, but I did initiate a search, so they apparently started searching...and guess what? About 2 weeks later I got an email, and it was my friend! How cool is that? I have been too busy to get together with her, or even email past the first few, but as soon as work calms down, I am going to call her. I was pretty excited. We were inseperable back then, and she is a cool chick. Get this... she is a machinist! LMAO! Now THAT is funny. I am not in the least surprised. Fun huh? Hi Stefanie! :)

The smell of leather....

It's one of those things that I can't describe, but I know it when I smell it. We got to smell a lot of leather last weekend. Bill will eventually get a big boy bike, and when he does, he will need some leathers to ride in. So, we loaded up, fed the pones, ran to the feed store, and then scooted down the highway to Beggs where the leatherworker has a shop.

Beggs is a tiny little town about forty miles from Tulsa. Of course, knowing how small it is, I did not take the address with me. My bad! The actual area of town with anything resembling a store is about 4 blocks, and we finally found it on the 4th block. LOL lost in a teeny town! We found them in a storefront on Main Street. The smell of leather hit you in the face when you walked in the door. There were racks and racks of the stuff. My brother had recommended them to us. He had a pair of chaps made several years ago and really likes them.

They had a bunch of ready made chaps on some racks. Of course, they were all black. No can do! Chaps are for protection, so I guess most people don't think about them past that. What I don't understand is how someone will spend $30K on a bike with a super fancy paint job, and then wear leathers that are just like everyone else's! I am a weenie. I know that riding a bike is dangerous and it scares me. I think that the brighter and more "different" you are, the more people will look at you. This is a good thing. If they see you, they are much less likely to run your ass over.

I have had custom chaps made before, so I know what all the options are. Poor Bill was a bit overwhelmed, and hadn't really given much thought to what he could actually have done, and what he really wanted. He was willing to go in and accept whatever they shoved down his throat. So we proceeded to tell them what he wanted. He wanted burgundy buffalo hide. Apparently, there is no such animal. (I know better, but...) They did have some burgundy/oxblood bull hide. It was very nice, so we decided on that for the base. It has enough red in it to be really loud next to the ho-hum black that everyone else wears. I asked Bill if he wanted something on the yoke. He looked at me like ??? I told him that he could have a different color on the yoke, or stamping or whatever. So, he says blue. Well there are about 20 shades of blue, so they started pulling out samples and books. He decided on sapphire blue. Cool - the bright/dark color will go well with the oxblood. Then I asked him if he wanted some piping. ???? You know, piping. A thin strip of color between the yoke and the legs. Ohhhhh! Yes. Yellow. Bright yellow. So we found a yellow for the piping. Then he wanted some sunwheels on the legs, done in the same yellow. Those will really get noticed, and I am all about people seeing him on that bike. I tried to talk him into fringe, but I think he was worried about how much they were going to cost. The owner was not big on fringe - said it got stuck in the zipper. Well, it ain't rocket science. Hold the fringe aside while you zip them eh? It's also possible that fringe is too girly. I could smell the smoke from his neurons firing, so no fringe. Even though this is my gift to him, and he should not have worried about the cost, he was fretting. I wasn't....

One thing that worries me is they did not measure him. They had him try on a pair of their ready made chaps and decided that was good enough. I get that bike chaps are different than horse chaps, but geeze. I am used to being measured and having a pattern made for me, or at the very least, having an existing pattern modified to fit me. The woman who owns the shop insisted that the legs have to be big to go over the boots he will be wearing. *No* they don't. You are just being lazy and wasting leather. Bill thought they were fine though, so as he is the one who will wear them, I let it go.

When my brother had his made, the shop was owned by a little old man. He sold the shop this year. The woman who bought it said that after he retired, at 80, he found that he was bored and asked if they would let him come back and work. Well DUH! They were happy to have him back, and frankly, I hope he works on Bill's chaps because I don't know that the new owner will do a bang up job. The old man has made hundreds of pair, so maybe we will get lucky.

When it comes time for me to have a pair, I don't know if I will go to them or not. I am waay more picky about chaps, and I want them to fit me correctly. I don't know if I can do the big baggy legs. Ick! I have made a couple of pair, and they are not hard...maybe I'll make my own! :)

Your tax dollars at work!

Every day, I drive by miles and miles of pastures full of horses. At first, I thought some obviously insane animal collector was randomly breeding them. My farrier disabused me of this notion by telling me that these were mustangs. The pastures are "holding areas" where they stash all the mustangs that were never adopted. The ranchers that feed them get paid a goodly sum to do absolutely nothing with them, other than make sure they don't starve, and report any that die. There are literally thousands of them standing around eating their heads off. Some of them are quite nicely built, and easy on the eyes. They will remain in the holding areas until they die, and we have the priviledge of paying for it. This really bothers me. I understand people wanting to see them running wild, but these horses are not running wild. They are housed in sex segregated herds, and I have yet to see a single one run. In the winter when the ranchers supplement their hay, they line up like a herd of cattle, eating the cubes the trucks trail out.

Why, pray tell, are we paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for this? It's not as if they do tours where people could take pictures, or just look at the horses, rather, they are off limits to the public. I wish all the people who are so adamant about mustangs being part of our history would have to pay for keeping these herds. I love horses as much as the next person, but this seems an unreasonable waste to me.

Sorry for the crappy pics. If you get out of the car they run away....

Idle hands...

Are nowhere to be found around here! I swear, Bill is trying to kill me. We have been working our collective asses off, and finishing up the jobs left and right. Yay! and Boo! At least we have some money in the bank to make payroll, but damn we are tired.

Just for the record, we do work in hell. Bill once told one of the guys on the crew that he was El Diablo Blanco, and he owned his soul. The poor guy never came back. I don't even think he picked up his final check. Working for the devil. HA!

We did a small patio for a distant relative of Bell Starr. He was very nice, if a bit odd. His wife made things simple for us by wanting only the base color with release. He wanted several highlight colors, but she overruled him. Excellent! We also did a little job for a previous customer. She had a gate put up on her drive, and we had to wreck out a strip for the conduit to go under the slab. We put it back with a nice paver brick pattern. She was easy too. Nice lady :) She says she will be calling us to replace the entire drive. Oh goodie :-P We are working now on another add on for a previous customer. It is tiny, so two days at most! Then we go up to Owasso to do a patio for a friend. She had a beautiful pergola installed, and we are doing the leaf pattern under the open end and a slate skin on the other. It is a bit bigger, bur still not over two days. Coolio!

Remember the job for the family friends? Wellll it is done. Hooray! We are hoping that that was our yearly PITA job. Believe it or not, the damn pump blew up on us...again! We pumped three days. The first day, we had an excellent pump jockey. His name is Randy, and he is the man! We only had one clog, and that is great. The second day, we had the newest driver they have, and man, did he make our lives miserable. First off, he was late, so the pump was not completely set up before the mud arrived. I mean holy hell. It is hard enough to pump a job without having the mixer sit and spin, heating the mud up, and making our job even harder. He finally got his shit together, and started pumping. He put waaay too much slick pack (a runny substance that makes the concrete move through the pump easier) in the hose. Think a huge bucket full of runny snot, and you will have the right image in your mind. We got one good push through, and then the sucker clogged up. He had so much pressure on the pump that, you guessed it, the hose nearest the converter burst. It blasted the whole side of the newly painted house with mud. Grrreat! Love you. Not! So, on top of the mud sitting for an hour before we even started, now we had to wait for this goober to replace the burst hose, and start again. After multiple clogs, we finally got it pumped out. The first of the pour was by now, getting hard fast. We struggled all day long with this pour, and we got our collective asses kicked. Bill is a fricking genius as far as making a "mistake" better. Our first rule is - it isn't a screw up if you can fix it. He fixed a bunch of stuff on that pour. The poor guy ended up having to hand grind a big section, but he did a great job.

Long story short, it is finished, and she loves it. Her hubby came out and told us that it was better than he imagined it could be. He had had his doubts from the first day, but I think he was pretty happy with it.

Here are some pics.

This slab was hand tinted with about three colors, not including the base color, and the highlighting release. It made for a nice effect. I think it is beautiful. I do not want to do this pattern again any time soon. It's a pain to bring two areas together and make them match. Ick. This is the "cave". It was the biggest pain in the ass I have done in a long time. No room to work. We had to make bridges from 2x4's and inch our way through it. Turned out well though

There you have it. Thank goodness it is finished. I hope they enjoy it :)

I am so far behind. More later :)

Colors of fall

I went to mom's house to water today, and got some pictures of a few of the things in her gardens that are turning colors. I can't remember what the name of this is, but it is pretty. Purple/blue berries that last till late in winter.

This is an Elkhorn Sumac. It's not much to look at in spring or summer, but it really turns on the color in fall.

This is a variegated dogwood tree. In summer the leaves are greens and yellow. It turns a vivid red in fall, along with the seeds. Very pretty!

I think fall is my favorite season. The colors are so vivid, and when the trees turn the hills look like they are on fire. The trees should start turning soon....

Here are a few pictures of the plants in my garden. I love the blanket flower. My favorite colors!

Japanese Maple and wild grapevine!

Jalapenos - HOT!

Purple Petunias. They smell sooo good!

Another face

I know you all think I am a loon...and you're correct! I spent some time at the barn the other day looking at all the trees that are destined to fall across my paddock fence and cause me to have eight coronaries. There are some very interesting things on them (if you are a loon, and interested in that sort of thing). My mother always swore that I talked to fairies as a little kid. I don't know about that, but I certainly see things -in other things- that most people would never notice.

On this particular outing, I found a bunch of creepy-cool fungus. Fungus faces to be exact. I think this one looks like a viking, or a samurai warrior...or something.

Here is the other side. Looks like a witch to me.

This is the front. Just weird.

This is weird too. There is actually grass growing out of a knothole that is about nine feet above the ground.

And here is the resident impossibly huge grasshopper. They give me the creeps and this sucker was a good three inches long. Erk!

heavy horses

We went to the fair Saturday. The only reason we go is to watch the heavy horses pull. These are the big ones. The horses that weigh almost a ton...each. I have watched, and participated in various horse activities for a lot of years. I've watched horses clear six foot tall jumps, spin, cut cattle, race, pull little fat men in carts, and pace on sounding boards. I can honestly say that nothing is as good as watching a pair of massive horses work as a team to pull ten *thousand* pounds on a sled in a dirt arena.

We have gone to the fair to watch them for several years now, and we have our favorites. We like to cheer them on, but we have to do it quietly. The horses listen to their teamsters for directions. When they are pulling, if the crowd says ohhh, they hear *whoa*, so any cheering is discouraged until they are unhooked from the sled. The men who place the singletree are pretty brave. Think about a team of horses that weighs close to four thousand pounds, dancing in anticipation, eagerly waiting for the signal to pull. Now imagine placing the singletree ring on the sled, and hoping you get your hands free before they start pulling! Sometimes the horses anticipate, and pull before the singletree is set. This is both dangerous and highly entertaining. More than one teamster has done a less than graceful face plant in the arena! In anticipation of the pull, these giant horses piaff well enough to make any dressage queen drool. It is fascinating to watch. The best of them wait for their driver to give the signal, trotting in place, then throwing their massive chests into the harness. The less restrained will pull as soon as they hear the singletree drop. It can be very exciting if the guys holding it accidentally drop it!

I admire the people who train and care for these beautiful animals. They are such gentle giants. You can tell that their people also admire and love them. When the going gets tough, and they need more than one pull to make the distance, you can watch while they talk to the horses, calming and encouraging them. It is easy to see that they are very important to the people who care for them. I have seldom seen such devotion in other horse endeavors. These folks groom and tack their own horses. They fasten the harness and shine the flashy silver themselves. They truly love their horses.

Here are some pictures...

This is the dangerous part - placing the singletree. You could easily lose a hand if the horses pulled at the wrong time. The boy in the red shirt has finally gotten big enough to help. Last year he was still loading the sled.

This team is mixed - one mare, and one gelding.

This is what they do between rounds. Napping is permitted.

What a way to earn your oats, eh? Notice all the people sitting against the wall? They are totally relaxed, and not worried that they might be mowed down by these enormous horses. I don't know if I'd want to sit there....

Are we finished yet? Can we go? Whoever said horses can't read?

It takes a lot of heart and want to to pull ten *thousand* pounds.

Pudgy Ponies Prance Ponderously

Translation: Fat assed horses run from bot flies. I did not think that moose could jump, but apparently they can. See below for proof. Note all four feet are off the ground. Simply amazing!

Even pretty Susie can get all her feet going pretty quick when the bot flies are buzzing. Poor girl hates them!