Mixed Bag

No Riding But.....

No sooner had I finished up with the horses this morning and turned Tucker out in the ring--the pasture and every place else truly wet from yesterday--when I checked my phone messages to find that my electrician had indeed stopped by earlier.

I must have just missed him. I figure he parked his truck on the driveway opposite to where my bedroom is and then walked in to look at my ring lights because I never knew he'd been here. His men were coming by in about an hour to change the lights over to something far more reliable than the ones I had. The halogens were constantly going out and I'd had them fixed a number of times--far more times than the hours I'd used them would ever have justified.

Now the morning was really tied up. With the men working in the ring I couldn't ride and I had to put the Boys out in the pasture so they didn't "help" the workers by nudging the ladder and generally making nuisances of themselves.

It took them several hours to finish the job. In the meantime, I decided to hook up the digital cable box, which took a bit of work as the TV is in a large corner cabinet and the working space was tight. Then, of course the box didn't work.

I called the cable company for help and after a few efforts, they finally decided to send a technician who would come sometime between 3 PM and 5 PM, but he'd call first so I needed to stay near the phone.

He did call at 3, and arrived soon after to find out that I had taken off a short cable connection that needed to be on the box. Mind you, NO WHERE in the directions for setting up the system did it mention this little wire. Nor did is show this little wire in any of the wiring diagrams or pictures of the box set up. Bummer. I apologized to the cable guy who said he understood because this kind of thing happens all the time. Perhaps it's time the company rewrites the directions for set up so people don't keep making the same mistake I did.

By then it was feed time, so I took care of the Boys and decided to wait until dark to see how the new lights worked.

Well, they are not as illuminating as the original lights but they work nicely, giving me more than enough light to ride, covering nearly all of the ring except the far eastern end, where I don't tend to work too much in the winter because of the places where the water collects.

These are "dusk to dawn yard lights," designed to go on and off automatically according to the daylight, but I have them on switches and turned them off after I'd looked things over and.....

Dragged the riding arena. My new drag is really nice and does the job in half the time, but I know it is to little avail as it is supposed to rain again tomorrow. The soggy surface is OK for riding and dragged it's even better, but the repeated rain is just waterlogging everything.

I'll have more puddles to deal with for sure. *sigh*

Even though the day would have allowed it, I opted out of riding anyone. Things just got too complicated around here. Maybe the rain won't start by morning and I can squeeze in a short school. If not, I really did waste today.

I'm not at all sure Tucker cares one way or another.