thanksgiving plans

firstly, i apologize for the lack of photography on this blog of late. hopefully i will change that in the near future.

today we printed the paper early for thanksgiving - here's this week's cover, featuring the meeteetse kid i interviewed several weeks ago who's working the national finals rodeo in vegas, beginning dec. 3! if you have espn, you should watch .

cause since last year i got rid of all my tv for expense reasons and i can't watch at my place :-( so if you do watch, you'll know who one of the three bullfighters is.

i think that's the third paper i've put together, and things went relatively smoothly. maybe this managing editor task isn't so daunting after all...

the him is currently on his way back from uinta county in southwest wyoming. he works for an energy company, mostly hauling equipment around the state for them, and he had to go down there to drop some things off in the uinta mountains, just across the utah border.

these are the uintas, from my trip down there last august:


have i mentioned how much i love mountains? and it's great, because most everywhere one travels in wyoming there's a different mountain range.

so anyway, i'm finishing up work in the office, the him's driving back to town, and then we're off to douglas this evening, to his mother's house, where we'll spend the night and camp out for thanksgiving festivities tomorrow. friend jamie is also driving over to douglas this evening, and the him told me this afternoon his aunt and uncle, lee and carole martinez (with whom i'm good friends) and their sons will be there tomorrow, too. and you know what that means?

yep, friend G will be there. but it'll be ok, it might even be fun. up until a few evenings ago i hadn't mentioned anything to the him about any past involvement with G, but it came up in conversation and he said 'yeah, i had a feeling there was something that had gone on there' and that was that. except he was kind of smug when he said 'but i'm the one that's got you now!'

so that's the plan. sister m will drive over to douglas from lander tomorrow - she's supposed to pick up her mare dixie and take her back west this weekend. last night amidst working at church till 10 p.m. i made apple and pecan pies to take over to douglas to share, and i think they turned out decent. time will tell. i'm always nervous, esp about pies, because i'm very critical of my pie crusts.

another update to follow thanksgiving....

quote of the day:

in our leisure we reveal what kind of people we are. - ovid

a few more things...

i forgot to mention that, after spending the night on friend j's couch, i found myself bumping back over the three miles of two-track in the same semi, but this time with friend j in a bathrobe. oh, the random moments there are to be encountered.

and also, while talking to friend D at cowboys earlier that morning, he was talking to me about women and how he doesn't have one, and we were talking about how friend G got screwed over by his latest. and he says to me - and he only said this because he'd been drinking - 'G and i were talking the other day, about women screwing around, and i said to him, you know there's one girl who'd never do that, and neither of us have a chance with her anymore.' and G says, 'you mean christy?'

and i was relieved. and it was rewarding. because i try so hard to be different and to do what i know i need to do. and i've gotten screwed over and hurt despite that. but those guys, they do notice. they may not realize it before they go and do something to hurt me and end things. but they look back and see it. and that makes being a 'good girl' worth it.

the him's birthday weekend

well, things continue to stay quite busy around here. last friday was a day in the office after being gone a couple days, and ex-managing editor jennifer was here so we went over things and did some planning for the weeks ahead. it was a busy day in the office - we also had a 2010 governor candidate come in for an interview.

immediately following work i met up with the him - it was his 34th birthday - and we fed my horses and went for dinner at a mexican restaurant here in town. he headed back out to the association when we were finished, and i met up with friend jake at his parents' house and we headed to the beacon, which was quite dead for a friday night.

right about the time i told jake 'i don't think i'll stay out much past 11,' i texted friend D to see what he was up to, and he says, 'i'm out at the bar.' after figuring out which bar, jake and i headed up to cowboys to see him - because friend D never comes out, so i gotta take advantage of it when i can.

next thing i knew jake had driven us back to his parents' and insisted on showing my his cab-over semi, for which he recently got his cdl. and then, next thing i knew, we were riding in his semi - gravel dump attached - over a two-track road the three miles to his place. :-P

and, next thing i knew, i passed out on his couch around 2:30 a.m. after having a little bit of breakfast that he made and setting my alarm for 6, in order to be at the specified intersection at 8 a.m. to meet the him and sister m. we had arranged to load in my last three tons of hay that morning.

the hay chores actually went quickly, and we were all done loading it into my hay storage by 10 a.m. promptly following that i met the him back at my place and we proceeded to travel to sheridan with a few others. it was kind of a birthday-weekend-trip-party for him. we went to king's saddlery and a few other tack/western shops downtown. we had intended to go out to the mint bar that evening, but i guess exhaustion set in because after eating dinner at sanford's i fell asleep at about 7 p.m. and didn't wake again until the next morning. :-) felt great tho.

when we where shopping i found a perfect mug from my ex-roomie E, who was recently unceremoniously dumped by my brother's long-time friend A. the mug says 'i'd rather be dumped by a horse than a man!' she will like it. :-) i also bought a new belt for myself, which is prettily embroidered with vine and flowers, with a few crystals and a pretty western buckle.

so then we had breakfast there in sheridan and traveled the two hours back to casper. the him and i went out to friend eddy's when we got back to town and re-hooked the red ranch trailer to his truck, loaded a colt that eddy had been working with but now he broke his ankle on another horse and has all manner of screws and plates in it, and headed out to the association.

we dropped the colt off, fed some cows and calves and made our way back to town and that was about it. roommate a and her new boy jim were also around the apt yesterday evening, and the him and i dined on frozen pizza while watching 'the ugly truth,' and that was pretty much it.

i woke up this morning to cold temperatures and a new coating of snow on the ground. today's the early deadline for the paper because of thanksgiving later this week, so i'm hoping to have it just about wrapped up by the time i leave today. things are going pretty smoothly - just got a few article to write and some editing/organizing to do.

ex-editor jennifer is in goshen county today doing some of her winter cattlemen's interviews. that deadlines dec. 11, and i'm keeping it at the forefront of my mind so it doesn't sneak up. it has a habit of doing that.

oh, and i think the him liked my birthday gift for him. i was pretty excited about it, so i really hoped he would. i got him that 44 inch silk scarf in slate blue, and the vogt silver pendleton bucking horse scarf slide. they look quite sharp together, if i do say so myself.

and you know what he's getting me for christmas? i'm really excited about it, because it's perfect. he's getting the mutton marshall to get a hold of the most recent abandoned brand list from the wyoming livestock board, and he's going to get me my very own brand. :-D it's very thoughtful, and, like i said, perfect. hey, if i'm sticking around wyoming long-term and becoming submerged in the ranching community, it's the next logical step. :-) because it's abandoned it won't come with irons, but he says the mutton marshall is really good at making them.

i probably will brand my horses and, who knows, maybe there are some black cows in my future. i wouldn't mind getting some cows together. i could run them on some of the shares out at the association, with the group that the him and his brother b have.

so that's a little of what's happening here. busy, and having a lot of fun.

the absarokas

my new blog header photo came from the lot of photos i took last weekend while elk hunting in the meeteetse area. those mountains are part of the absarokas, which line a part of the west edge of the big horn basin. the tallest peak there is francs peak, and it's just over 13,000 feet. not the biggest range in wyoming by any means, but they were beautiful in the morning sunlight with the fresh pure white snow.

i took those photos friday morning, and then the him, his 16-year-old nephew dallas and i went out saturday afternoon in some of our down time and he was showing me some of the country, but there were snow clouds hanging around the peaks so i wasn't able to take good mountain photos that day.

these are some of the photos i did get, though:


these two photos are cows on the pitchfork ranch meadows. the pitchfork is a large historic ranch that, at one time, was big enough to have its own zip code.






the photo below is the highway from thermopolis, right before you drop down into the town of meeteetse. when i drove up there for labor day there were fireworks over the town as i topped this hill.


this was friday morning after the him, brother b and nephew dallas each shot a calf elk. the him was field dressing dallas's because dallas 'forgot how brother b did it.'


this is the area we hunted sunday morning, in effort to get me a shot at a bull. it was so cold. 13 degrees when we left friend buck's house to go stand on the river at 6 a.m. watching the sun come up on the crisp morning was pretty, though.


'if a big bull runs by and you're making me take a picture and don't get a good shot....' - the him

no time

so yeah, last week's post still rings true. things are still nuts. haven't even had time to write any new posts or fix up photos to put up.

elk hunting was a lot of fun. i didn't shoot one, but mexican martinez, brother b and their nephew dallas each got a calf the first morning we went out.

this morning i just finished up a special edition we're publishing for the upcoming range beef cow symposium. now this afternoon i've got two articles to research and write for the regular weekly. other than that, though, this week's paper doesn't have a whole lot more work to do on it. organizing news briefs and some shorter items to put in the folders and nit picky stuff like that. it's those things that take forever - making sure everything's there and labeled how it's supposed to go and ready for tracy to pull out and place into the paper.

i have to get most of that done today because i leave at 6 tomorrow morning to make cheyenne by 8:30 for a two-day meeting of wyoming association of conservation districts and wyoming weed and pest. and i'm supposed to go to a board of land commissioners meeting on thursday, too, but i don't even know any details on that yet.

then friday is the him's birthday, and melissa's coming through on her way to move back to laramie. i already have the him's gift - i hope he thinks it's as fabulous as i do. i was trying to decide between going out for dinner or making him dinner, but i think with the miniscule amount of spare time i have these days, we better just go out.

last night i did make stuffed pork chops with an orange juice/lime juice/oregano marinade and stuffed with parmesan and bacon. (that was supposed to be swiss and ham, but i didn't have time to go to the grocery store so substitutions reign supreme) they turned out well and he complimented them.

flunking

so i'm doing all i can to keep things pulled together and get on top of this whole editor deal. it's tough. i haven't flunked yet, but i haven't even really started either.

i'm making every effort to get things obscenely organized so i don't lose them or forget about them. things like news items, article ideas, opinion pieces, editorials...everything jen already had in her files for the upcoming papers.

i've been making contact with our correspondents - new ones - and letting them know what they can do/how to do it. how come they want to start now? couldn't they have talked to jen earlier?

i've started a running list of article ideas. that's what's terrifying me at the moment. running out of ideas to fill the paper.

and all this has been done from the road in goshen county, when most of the last two days have already been filled with eight ranch visits and interviews for winter cattlemen's edition.

i've taken to getting up at 5:30 to work on things before leaving for the office/wherever else i may need to go that day. that gives me a solid hour and a half to get a head start on whatever's impending.

so it's been tough. this is my first week officially in charge of pulling everything together. it's ok. i needed the challenge. i was getting bored, and lazy. this has definitely got my attention back on the job at hand.

we may be a little newspaper, with an extremely niche market, but we work really hard to do a good job, and it's a big job. it will be good to stretch my skills and brain power and expand into something bigger and beyond where i was. it was time for me to grow up a little bit more. in time this will be yet another chapter in the adventure that is my life.

goshen county

i'm in goshen county in southeast wyoming for the night.... visited five people today for interviews for our upcoming winter cattlemen's edition, three more tomorrow and hopefully back in casper by 4:30 to work at church. it's a very busy week, with these two days in torrington, a day in the office wednesday, a morning at a meeting in meeteetse on thursday, then elk hunting!! going to meet mexican martinez and brother b up there in the big horn basin thursday, then we're hunting fri-sun. i'm nervous, but i'm a pretty good shot so hopefully i don't shoot something and not kill it and we end up chasing it for miles :-P they all have tags and they'll have rifles too, so if i don't quite get it they're there for backup. i'm looking forward to it.

so this managing editor thing is kind of overwhelming me when i think about it too hard. trying to get things organized - jen's sent me a lot of her stuff and i have to file it so i don't lose it or forget about it - and get things lined out and get into a plan. it's going.

rodeo

i am happy.

just cody

not a lot going on round here, just been in cody the last few days. i have two more sessions of my meeting to go to, then an interview with a ranch couple at 11 who won landowners of the year at the meeting i'm at, then shopping on cody's main street for a while until i need to head south to get to shoshoni by 4 for an interview for a women in ag feature. in november the wyoming women in ag always have their annual conference, so each week we feature a different ranch woman in the paper.

lynn mayfield was last week's that i wrote. her son's name is jace, she has another first-grade son koll and husband justin. they live on the shepperson family ranch at midwest.

oh wait. i think she's going in this week. too many things going on i don't know what's happened yet and what's in the future.

yesterday i caught up with dusty tuckness - a 23-year-old bullfighter from meeteetse who made it to the national finals rodeo, which is quite an accomplishment. he must be really good at what he does, because how they're selected is the top 20 bullriders in the nation vote on the top 10 bullfighters, then they go back again to choose the top four, and from them the three are chosen to work the nfr in vegas. i'm excited for him, he seemed like a really good kid who's taking his chosen career very seriously.

this is him, another day at work:


have i said before how surreal it is to see people that i know on national tv riding in rodeos? i always used to watch them before and have not even a vague idea who they were. now i've met them, or they're friends of friends or i've at least heard outrageous stories about them.

maybe this year i'll have to trek over to the mutton marshall's to watch the finals, because since last year i ditched my satellite tv.

so anyway. after interviewing dusty i went back to the irma and met up with marvin and janey again - good friends of mexican martinez and his family - and met many others who know them, all old rancher types. oh, and horse packer ross from last summer's sheepherder's fair was there too.

what an obnoxious character, but everybody just accepts ross for ross.

so that's my life lately, just doing the usual things. driving around wyoming and visiting with good people and catching up with friends in the far corners of the state.

link, the cat tailor

here he helps me figure out a pattern i haven't looked at in over three years. we were beginning construction on three flapper dresses for halloween 2009.


and overseeing cutting out the blue fabric.

and overseeing the aqua fabric.


i love this photo. look at that expression. i love this cat.


somewhere in the midst of the project he gained this red remnant collar. he's still wearing it. :-) i put an aqua one on lexus but she discarded it.


and managing the completion of sewing on fringe on roommate a's red dress.


fringe is tiring business:


aaaaand....tada! roommate a's finished dress. i'm very pleased with it. she looked great. so did friend n. didn't ge ta photo of her in her dress.


and here's the rest of the photo i posted before. sorry mexican martinez i cut you out. :-)

a comparison

2008:
still in the midst of ex-boy drama, in a crisis with friend g, had recently given up on obtaining a job back in iowa, put together very-last-minute halloween costume with roommate a at the mall...little did i know what the next year would bring.

2009:
made many good friends in the last year, many of whom were out at the beacon to celebrate, constructed fabulous flapper costumes for roommate a and her friend n and ducked out on mine at the last minute, got a thing going with a generous and kind ranch cowboy from just outside of town, was promoted the day before to MANAGING EDITOR of the wyoming livestock roundup. :-)


2009 was a much better halloween than 2008. and, a thing that pleases me most of all, is look how much longer my hair is. i don't even know why i thought it was a good idea to keep it short...well i do, but i shouldn't have.

more photos to follow of the dressmaking process, and my little tailor helper link cat.