On Autumns doorstep

Here we are nearing the end of seasonal summer (I go by nature not the calendar) the grasses are drying off and the golden rod is blooming, even the rose hips are turning dark orange.  Leaves on a lot of the trees are yellowing and in a strong wind a few are already letting go to flutter to the ground.

I also know that autumn is near because we are getting ready to wean this years crop of calves.
Rob will start cleaning the corrals this weekend and I am doing the calf sheets up, which lists the animals tag numbers, parents and weights etc.  The only fly in the ointment to us being able to wean the first group on Monday is the neighbour, who offered to do a spot of specialty welding on our aluminum stock trailer, still hasn't done it yet.

This neighbour is a really nice guy but super super busy, he works the oilfield, owns a picker truck, and farms.  We have him do some welding for us from time to time and in return he borrows our equipment to farm, He has only been farming for a dozen years and doesn't have the extensive line of machinery that Rob has. He borrows things like a field disc, cultivator, our grain truck and just this week our hay rake, he has a brand new version of our rake but his hired help ( the teenage boy he hired to help hay) hit a rut and ripped one of the rake wheels off.  This neighbour is hard on his equipment because he is so busy and does everything at high speed to be able to get it all done on time.  Makes me cringe a bit when he borrows our newer stuff, but we can't say no or he might not do the welding.

I have to nag Rob to get him to nag Troy...hahahaha....or we won't be weaning until November...

I am hopeful that the good healthy cattle prices stay up until we sell the calves sometimes in late October.  Last year they stayed good until the week before ours sold...which was so disappointing.

I got my hair cut on Tuesday. It's been 10 months since my regular stylist went on maternity leave, perhaps never to return, she was having twins.    In April I broke down and went to new salon in town, which turned out to be a big mistake.  I got a very bad cut and paid a hefty price for the privilege.  Since then I have just let it grow but it was in dire need of a trim at the least to get rid of the bad ends. The layering had basically grown out and it just hung there limply...An, EX-friend (recently a person I thought of as good friend) recommended I try one of the many FIRST CHOICE Cut places in the city. and to it just goes to prove how desperate I was for a cut, I actually went to one.  It was a very sterile, kind of surreal experience. You don't know the persons name, you can't choose who cut it, who ever is free takes the next person on the list kinda thing.  I got a young Asian girl, she was pleasant enough, talked the whole time about how much her boyfriend wants to have a child.  They do not wash your hair, or they do but it costs $5. they do not use any product, just spray the hair with water and cut...they do blow dry but she just used her fingers to move the hair around and so when I left, my hair was full of static cling and drove me insane the rest of the day...which we spent in the city...and I looked like a hillbilly with flat lifeless hair hanging in my face....I hate that... and I look hideous with straight hair. I always need volume and wave in my hair style to even half descent. In spite of the initial drama in the truck, taking my ex-friends name in vain and cursing Rob for suggesting I ask her opinion, I survived...but just barely...hahaha    The actual hair cut was not bad, the next day I washed and styled it myself the way I like and it looks good. So I might think about going back, it was certainly affordable,   I call it a super shaggy page boy style.  The multi layering looks good on me and really lets my natural curl happen, right now it looks like a perm job its so curly.

I had the consult with the aneasticist on Wednesday finally in preparation for my colonoscopy. Have you had yours?  If you're fifty or older you need to have one done.  I went last month to see the surgeon who does it and was turned away because he cancelled his appointment due to a surgery at the hosp. then this week I was to go on Monday, but the anesticist was sick after a holiday in Egypt and cancelled to rebook for Wednesday, I finally got to see him and am all ready for my procedure in two weeks.  Hopefully I get the all clear like Rob did last year and won't have to go for another 10 years.

Huh ?

Since deciding to buy some sort of mobile device, my life has been a vortex.  Literally having the life sucked right out of my body by radon gases given off by the screen of my new iPad.  As per usual in our lives (mine and R's) we do nothing in half measures. I originally wanted a small tablet, just to doodle around on the web with and play games.  The cost was significant enough that it made us question whether we wouldn't get more bang for our buck upgrading to a new desk top computer which we were direly in need of 5 years ago.  Ours was so old that windows kept popping up when ever I was online telling me that Google no longer supported my version of Internet explorer...once we started to do our research we found that my computer was sadly lacking GB's of ram and hard drive.   Staples store had an awesome back to school sale on and so we went to look.  Well, just as I dreaded, R got carried away while talking with the sales man and we came home with a new desktop computer, (which I admit we did really need) AND not just a less expensive android tablet ( I wanted the Google Nexus 10" ) but the 10 inch iPad 4th generation tablet. nearly double the cost. 

Off topic:  while we were being given the demo of the iPad by the just out of high school salesman, some nimrod with shopping cart came barrelling down the aisle and side swiped a huge cardboard display box full of some computer gadget things. this thing stood over 6 ft tall and was about 3 ft wide. I didn't see what exactly happened since I was paying attention to the tutorial we were being given and had my back to that aisle. But the whole thing came careening down on my hitting me in the lower shoulder blade area with one of the sharp corners and all the gadgets being displayed hit the back of my legs making me pitch forward and having to grab hold of the counter in front of me to avoid going down face first. I must have let out a muffled curse, because both R and the sales man turned and a look of horror came to their faces.  I was almost afraid to turn and see what had hit me. When I did, there was some bald little dip shit grabbing up the products strewn on the floor at my feet and throwing them back into the bottom of this large cardboard display box. not bothering to put them back on the metal pegs in the right places. He never said a word, didn't even look up...grabbed his cart and rushed off down the aisle like his balls were on fire. then of course I had to endure the smothering ingratiation of the sales person and a couple more store employees who saw it happen and came rushing over.  My shoulder stung and the back of one leg was burning a bit... later when we got home we found that the box corner had left a small gash and bruise on my shoulder and that the metal pegs that the packages were hung on, one of them must have poked my leg because I had dried blood where it had poked a hole in my calf and blood had run down into my sock.  So, to say the least, I was a bit distracted after that, which is my excuse for not putting my foot down about the iPad.

Since that expensive day, I have been holed up in the house setting it all up, I opted to transfer all my own files to the new computer which turned out to be really easy, I just bought a mobile hard drive device, saved all my files to it. unplugged the old computer, hooked up the new one, which runs windows 8, plugged in the mobile hard drive and sent them to C drive. Easy peasy...

setting up the iPad is another matter, not being familiar with Apple products makes it very time consuming because I have to look everything up, and make new passwords, etc....still haven't figured out how to get pictures from the windows PC to the iPad.  Tried a few things but no luck so far.

I am, though, now addicted to playing word games and sudoku on the iPad. Oh ya... to the exclusion of nearly everything else right now....I am sure the novelty will wear off.

R's justification for being so extravagant is that if we have to live out here so isolated from everyone and work 24 / 7 / 365 then we should at least be able to connect with family and such this way.

so there you go you guys, you better connect with me now...