wonderful weather

this past weekend was once again spent at the ranch. when it's so nice and warm and dry out, it's hard to justify staying in town. however, all the things i've been putting off until it gets cold and nasty are once again put off another weekend.

the above photo is sam, a hunter from texas, on the black horse, and sister melissa on her horse dixie while we were moving a few cows from south of the highway back onto the association on the north side. saturday morning scott, sam, melissa and i loaded up after breakfast and we finished this task up pretty quick, as the cows were feeling good and moved along really well.

there weren't many cows, just a few with their calves that bob had pastured on a blm lease for the summer. i took lucy once again to help out, and she had a lot of fun with the cows, who would come out of the herd to take her, which only made her feel more important when she went after them to chase them back into the bunch.

the heifer calf that scott gave me last spring wasn't in the bunch we moved, but she was in the pasture into which we moved them, so i trotted over there to take a look at her - i haven't seen her all summer. she's the red one in front, and she's growing good, as are all the calves, and she looks nice. next weekend we'll gather the pasture, bringing them all into the corrals for weaning. some will go to the sale barn in riverton the following week, and the heifers will go to a friend's feedlot for the winter. the cows usually also leave the association for winter pasture, but i'm not sure what the plan is for them this year.

since both melissa and i rode our old mares that morning, i had scott take a photo of us together. these are the two girls we received for christmas in 1994, and they're still going strong. we've come a long way from the pine forests and red clay of georgia, where they both came from as two-year-olds. they will be 18 years old this spring.

i'm a little concerned about april heading into winter, as she's a little thin. she was thin going into winter two years ago, and had a tough time catching up. being out on range all summer and fall, she hasn't got the condition on her that i put on her last fall at the stables. since she's in foal - or at least i'm pretty sure she is - i'm even more concerned, and if it decides to come in and storm and be a snowy winter, i'll bring her back into galles stables to keep a closer eye on her. my other one, jazz, on the other hand, is quite rotund. i don't ever have to worry about her at all.

sunday morning melissa and i headed out again with our horses. scott dropped us off in one of the mountain pastures and we went and found a bull, moved him to another pasture and rode back to the house. i took foxy with us, along with lucy and melissa's two dogs, and that was the longest trip she'd been on. there were several water opportunities, and she did just fine. the ride back to the house was quite a distance, but it was such a nice morning it didn't really matter.

after loading up and heading into town to deliver my horses and clean the office i went to the house to clean up before scott and i went to meet the whole martinez clan and the texas hunters at a mexican restaurant here in town for dinner. another full weekend! and it was good to be back at the house, after being gone since last wednesday morning.

tonight scott and i plan on going to get our wood stove for the front room. scott has drafted friend eddy to help us carry it into the house, in exchange for dinner. then, we'll have to hook up the stovepipe and go get the firewood from trav's place, maybe later this week, and we'll be in business! i'm very excited for having a wood stove in the house. it will be so cozy when it starts to snow and i have the christmas lights up on the eves and on the front porch. :-)

i think i might even be winning scott over to the christmas spirit, as last night he mentioned where he thought the christmas tree should go. he grew up with a father who would only let decorations go up two days before christmas, as long as they were taken down the day after, so i count his thoughts on the christmas tree as a big step in the right direction!

the news

because nothing big and important has happened or occurred to me to write, here are some random happenings, in the interest of keeping up on posts:

- noon today i head back to casper from evanston, where i've been for this agrifuture meeting since wednesday. it's been a good meeting, and i've enjoyed my time in evanston. the facility is fabulous - it's the restored railroad roundhouse and machine shop - and the whole town is very hospitable. they're really working hard to generate more visitors, and i think it's working. last night i went to dinner with stock growers staff members, and it was very nice.

- i'll head straight to the ranch after leaving, instead of heading back into town first. the ranch is one hour closer than town, and i packed all my riding and hunting clothes and brought them with me wednesday. scott took the day off and is hunting deer today with bob and friends from texas, and this evening my sister melissa will arrive from lander. she's helping us move cows tomorrow, and i'm so happy that i get to join them. originally i was going to have to drive to lander for a day trip and a tour of the new BSL3 lab addition to the state vet lab, but now i've delayed that tour for a month. this BSL3 (biosecurity level 3) addition is a big deal, and good for the state, because now we can work on our own brucellosis issues, and other federally controlled diseases. brucellosis has been a big challenge in our cattle and elk populations.

- i have new shirts! yesterday afternoon when the meeting finished i dropped into the evanston boot barn, because boot barns sometimes have good sales. it's hit and miss, but i found two of my favorite cut of shirts for 50 percent, so i have some new additions. i may be in a 'shirt rut' because the cruel girl arena fit style is all i buy, in different colors/patterns, but it's just that i know they'll fit so well - i can tuck them in and the sleeves are long enough, which are good qualities for shirts to have!

- the leaves are falling. that means i'll have to buy a rake for my yard soon.

- hopefully next week we'll also get our wood stove purchased and installed in the front room of the house. it will be so cozy, especially when it starts snowing and there's a christmas tree in the front window.

- the horses are getting fuzzy! i like late fall, when they start growing their winter hair, but aren't yet completely woolly.

- next week will be the only week for quite a while where i'm in the office all week. november is convention season for the ag groups in wyoming.

- scott's birthday is coming up on nov. 20. we've flip-flopped between birthday weekend plans. right now it's to take friday off - all day for him, half day for me - and then have a party at the house saturday evening.

- i finally got our wedding party invitations ordered. they should be here mid-week next week, if not sooner. i got a great deal, including envelopes and address labels. i made them and added them in at the last minute, when i got to thinking about writing return addresses by hand on several hundred envelopes.

- i'll be out of cell service again all weekend. while no service is inconvenient at times, it's refreshing to shut it off and be un-contactable for several days at a time.

- for some reason that's all i can think of at this time. have a good weekend!

the saga of source gas

SourceGas is the local natural gas supplier. their record keeping is atrocious.

here is exhibit A:

August - paid normal bill for $26.02, received a check in return for the same amount
September - paid normal bill, $26.02 said to be overdue
October - received notice of disconnect for $50.54. called the office, they said they had the payment, faxed them payment records to straighten it out. next day, received normal bill, showing overdue payment. one day later, received check in the amount of $50.54.

what is one supposed to do with stupid utility companies? one side of them is charging me overdue and threatening to stop service, and the other half is sending me money.

back in the bridger valley

it's autumn in wyoming! granted it may be four or five weeks late, but the temperatures are cooling, the trees are turning, and the thought of snow has entered peoples' minds.

the above photo was taken in wyoming's bridger valley, clear down in the southwest corner of the state. so far, that it falls off into utah most of the time. to get here, one has to drive and drive across the desert on i-80 - a less-than-scenic experience - and finally the interstate drops off and cuts across the north end of the valley, which is filled with small towns, irrigation, meadows, cattle and sheep. i like it there, it's just that it takes so long to get to!

i'm in this area for the two-day agrifuture conference, organized by the wyoming department of agriculture and held in evanston. on my way by bridger valley - 30 miles to the east - i stopped and visited with dale micheli, a hereford producer. he's just finished up his first year on the american hereford association board of directors, and that's what we visited about, before going out to take a look at a few of his bulls and getting some photos. their annual bull sale is in a couple weeks, so they're busy gearing up for that. last year they got blizzarded out. hopefully the weather won't change that quickly for that to happen this year.

so today includes more meeting-sitting for me. then headed back to the ranch tomorrow afternoon to spend some time before heading to laramie on saturday. too busy!

the weekend

this last weekend was another busy/relaxing one spent at the ranch, helping with fall work.

saturday we gathered cow/calf pairs off the meadow near the ranch headquarters and took them to the corrals to sort the calves off the cows. the calves were weaned and shipped off in two trucks, and the cows were pregnancy-tested for next spring's calves. the non-pregnant cows, or 'open' cows, will be sold, and the bred cows will be taken back to the owner's place for the winter.

this photo is scott and a guy named willy from cody. the work in the corrals is a combination of on horseback and afoot.

after we finished that, saturday afternoon i watched the university of wyoming football game with sister-in-law becky and took a nap on the couch! it was wonderful, until the men started coming in the house and kept waking me up... scott and i went to bed early, and i was actually ready to wake up and able to make it to the house for breakfast fully awake the next morning.

saturday morning breakfast was at 5, and we had to wait forever for the cloudy morning to brighten up enough to get to work. at least it seemed like forever. i helped becky do the dishes and clean up the kitchen, and it was still a while before we left the house. even though they're early, and i put off getting out of bed as long as possible, i do enjoy ranch breakfasts. becky always does a good job, and the whole crew sits around and drinks black coffee and eats eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy, cinnamon rolls or whatever else she's prepared for the morning.

sunday morning we saddled again and loaded the horses to go gather a pasture and kick the pairs through the gate to the next pasture over. in a few days that pasture will be gathered, and the pairs trailed all the way to the house, in preparation for shipping their calves. the association is a busy place this time of year, with all the members and those running on leased shares shipping their calves and gathering their cows up to take to their various wintering grounds, to return again the next spring.

after arriving down at the pasture sunday morning we unloaded and scattered across the landscape to collect the cows, which were pretty much equally scattered to all corners. and we were trying to push them upcountry, and of course all the spoiled girls only wanted to head downcountry. and there was some *ahem* less-then-skilled help that came along with the guy leasing shares this summer, so that made for more work but great stories to recount afterward!

 my girls were very excited to be gathered up to work over the weekend. it's been a long time since i've got them from their pasture and put them to good use. i left them and all my tack up at the ranch for the week, as i have to leave town for three days this week. that way they'll be there when i need them next saturday.

 scott's little foxy waits safely under the fence at the horse corrals.

 i think lucy had just come through the creek when i was gathering the colts in so the one could be gelded.

 all four pups got their rabies shots while the vet was there.

 meg is lucy's sister, and a very big girl.

 scott and jamie sunday morning.

piling out to unload the horses and gather cows on sunday.

 following bulls down the bottom, pushing them west to join the rest of the bunch. lucy loves to help.

 more bulls. it was a gorgeous day to be out riding.

 lucy knows to take advantage of rest breaks when they're available.

this is about half of the cows, right before we kicked them through the gate.

tempting

fall is a bad season. it's a bad season, because it's when all the western catalogs come in the mail.

coworker heather and i have been sharing the pain.

fall is when the clothing manufacturers lay out their new designs and tempt all who see. there have been several in the last couple days, and it's a good thing i'm still short spending cash from pendleton (or is it? maybe i shouldn't have spent so much there), otherwise i would have already done a little bit of clicking online and put a few orders in post-haste.

i already fell for these jeans and purchased them while in pendleton.

but not the hat. those fake, spray-painted, scrunched up straw hats are the bane of western fashion. why can't people wear decently-shaped, upstanding palm leaf or felt hats?

i very, extremely rarely purchase jeans at full price - i'm the kind who waits forever to find my perfect size and length on sale - but something came over me when scott and i were in the farm store in pendleton, while waiting around for our appointed wedding ceremony time. i purchased not only one, but two expensive pairs of jeans. this pair is by cowgirl tuff, the other pair is from my long-favorite jean and shirt brand, cruel girl.

i think i justify it by saying that, technically, they're work expenses, because i need to keep my wardrobe up for attending meetings and going out on interviews, right?

but, price aside, aren't they a fun pair of jeans? i couldn't resist them. there's another pair made by another company that has pistols on the pockets. i like to pair these with my black cruel girl shirt with the zebra-stripe snaps and my new pair of black purple-top nocona boots that has quickly become my favorite.

that catalogs that are my most recent wish books are from national roper supply and fort western.

the new look

well, folks, i mentioned that scott and i purchased a new tv the other evening. yes, the one where we were supposed to go to dinner date and a movie, but i worked too late at the office and it ruined the movie plans. instead we went tv shopping. :-)

so here it is, in the tv area, and scott kicked up and obviously enjoying himself watching the pbr performance on sunday afternoon. we also got a blueray player and an antenna, so it's really a luxury for us. up to now, i haven't even had local channels available, and i have to note that i've never bought a tv in my life. the last two were freebies, and as good of quality as freebie tvs will be. i still can't bear to cough up the money for any cable or satellite - i just don't watch tv enough to justify the expense. scott mentioned perhaps this winter, when it's dark and cold, he would pay for some sort of tv service.

lucy likes the new rug, and it even looks like it's her natural environment. :-) actually, she was just really tired from running around up at the ranch and coming back in with scott.

and fox is so tough, she doesn't need a rug.

and she's nuts. she likes to sleep upside down, and she enjoys her sleep more than any other pup i've seen, with frequent stretches and grunts and groans and contented sighs.

you can see a small rubber tire on the floor there beyond her. i made a trip to ross over the weekend, as the dogs were getting low on chew toys, and i found them five new things - and none with stuffing! that's what they get when i get tired of picking up all the fluff balls. and, ross is an ideal place to get dog toys, because they're cheap, and when one set gets worn out i can just go pick up a new variety.

yes, still sitting in my meeting in buffalo. i think they're just about done, talking about some changes to the weed and pest control legislation right now, but nothing i'd write about for the newspaper. one more topic to go after this, and then it's back home i go.

this was my evening:

this is what my evening was composed of: the cattlemen's proof, my red pen, my laptop, ben and jerry's and the tv, which eventually switched to 'the blind side' movie. i was glad to find it on tv, as i'd only seen it the one time in the theater.

i proofed until 11:30, sent half my changes to tracy and went to bed. woke up at 5, got ready for the day, sent more changes to tracy and now in another day of meeting. today the wyoming department of agriculture will review their list of bills, which includes nine, by the time we get to the end of it. their segment just started, and is supposed to stretch to 3:30. wouldn't it be nice if they run ahead of schedule?

on another note, this is the most inviting hotel bed i've seen in a long time:

the reason why posting has been so scarce

i thought i'd at least share with you the reason why i haven't posted much over the past week.

this is the cover of our cattlemen's edition this fall, and it's 36 pages - four pages larger than what i thought the maximum would be. thanks to our sales staff - jody, denise and curt - we are way over in advertising for the edition. that's a great thing overall, but a point of stress for us on the editorial side of things. if they sell too much advertising, or more than i anticipate, and we have to add more pages, that means i might run short of articles to fill those pages.

thankfully, everything worked out just about right. there are 25 articles in the edition, and a 26th that will run on the cover of the regular paper this week, to lead people into the special edition. thankfully i had those extras, as initially i was only planning for 24 articles, including the cushion. in past years we usually use 20 or 21 articles total.

the nice thing about this edition is that heather and i had help from two correspondents - echo and melissa. echo contributed two articles, and melissa wrote three, which really is a big help. the remaining 20 were pretty evenly split between heather and i. i forget how it eventually fell with the numbers. but it was a lot, i know that!

so, i spent last friday afternoon, after the regular weekly went out, sorting, organizing, editing, labeling, copying and pasting in all the files for the edition. each file holds a document containing the article, title, captions and pull quote, as well as word count so tracy has a better idea of where each article will fit. the photos are also in their corresponding files, titled, resized, lightened and converted to CMYK for the printer.

maybe it takes me longer than it would someone else, but i read through everything carefully at least once, making the appropriate editing changes for wording, punctuation, flow, etc. i also spent the better part of saturday working on the files, and by the end of the day i had all of them to tracy. just in time to head out to the beacon for a few drinks with scott, heather and company! paula was also there, decked out in full 80s clothing, for the themed bachelorette party she was a part of.

now, we're on to proofing the edition. i'm in buffalo at a legislative meeting today and tomorrow, but i've got the edition printed out, and worked through some of it on my lunch break. proofing requires another careful check of the editorial, as well as formatting, titles, captions, layout, etc. it's the big-picture proofing.

this is what the pages look like when we proof. tracy has gone through and blocked out all the ads, fitting them together where they need to go. certain ads need color, and most run in black and white, so she has to make sure the proper ads land on the color pages. incidentally, the articles that fall on the color pages get color photos, as well.

we have an A section and a B section in cattlemen's, so this is a page from A.

so now you know why i've been absent from my blog for some time. the reason i'm posting at this moment is because we're in the middle of a wyoming livestock board budget and fees report, and most of the important things on this subject we've already covered in the paper. next we're talking about livestock identification, quarantine, feral animals and other such subjects from the livestock board, and i'll have to take copious notes on them.

other than work, this last weekend i did get a chance to clean the house a little, put my new rug down, *** install the new tv scott and i bought friday night ***, rearrange a little furniture and thoroughly water the front yard. i didn't go anywhere on sunday, and it was wonderful. it's been a long time, and i needed it.

just a break for lunch

well, here it is friday and i haven't posted since monday! really, all i've been doing is working, and being sick, this week.

so, for lack of any recently downloaded photos from my little red camera, here's the cover of the paper this week. yesterday it was decided that we needed to add four pages to it, so that meant i spent yesterday afternoon writing three more articles to fill it. thank goodness for leftover notes from meetings past! i pulled one article from the stock growers' meeting last june, and another from a wyoming business council workshop in august. never throw away notes!

the cover photo for this week is the one i took coming over powder river pass last saturday, when publisher dennis and i were on our way back from coworker jody's mother's funeral services. otherwise, i usually like to put at least two other secondary photos on the cover, but this week i was just too busy to put much thought into it, and i figured the bright gold trees were strong enough to carry it this week.

today is deadline for fall cattlemen's, so that's what i'm in the middle of. right now i took a quick break to walk the two blocks down to first street bakers for a lunch sandwich. the conveniences of working near downtown! i have most all the files in for cattlemen's, just waiting for a few odd photos and one more article yet from sister melissa - the one i set her on last-minute.

at least i feel pretty much over my cold. if my head still hurt today like it did the last two days, i'd really be having a tough time of it. i would have loved a nap yesterday afternoon, but alas, the blank holes in the weekly paper were calling my name.

tonight, when all this work is done, i am headed out for dinner at outback and a movie with my sweet husband, who asked at the week's beginning if i'd go on a date with him this evening. we've also accumulated a bit of funding as wedding gifts, and i think we're going to go look at a new tv - one of the previously decided items on our 'wedding wish list.' nothing big or fancy, just an upgrade from my freebie that has a discolored corner. :-) and perhaps an upgrade dvd player that can play netflix, as the one my brother gave me four years makes grinding and rubbing noises that sometimes rival the volume of the movie.... it's a wonder it still works!