Goodbye Old Friend

I need to say another goodbye. This one to a very good old friend of mine...my old horse trailer.

I had this trailer for almost 6 years. It treated me pretty good, always got me where I needed to go and put up with a lot of crap. heh crap...get it?

Anyways, it was the first trailer I ever hauled, my first experience hauling a horse, my first big adult purchase. I have so many great memories with this trailer and before I said good bye to it I had to document all of it's...ummm..."character". Each bump and bruise, dent and scratch, a different memory.

Like this one...

A nice big ol' dent right on the nose. It happened the first time I tried to park it in my soft dirt, 90 degrees off of a narrow driveway parking spot after I got my trailer brakes hooked up. I wasn't used to having trailer brakes and didn't realize that they would lock up very easily on the soft dirt. I jack knifed it. Oops! The boyfriend had installed the brake box for me, so it's kind of a sweet memory. The first truck improvement of our relationship.

Then there are these chew marks...

The first time I pulled in to the boyfriend's mom's pasture to turn my trailer around after one of our first rides together and one of her other horses decided to visit the horses in the trailer and chewed on it. Kinda pissed me off at the time, it was one of the first scratches in my trailer, but I laugh about it now. Just adds character.

Then there was the front wall...

Oh, that darn front wall. As you can tell, many a horse fought with that wall. No clue what the issue was but my Midori was the only horse that EVER hauled quietly against that wall. I had a few horses come out bruised and bloody from fighting with that wall. It was annoying.

And this divider...

Oh the divider! Had a few horses get stuck in the front stall when the middle horse leaned on this divider and it got stuck closed. That was always fun. And then there was my friend's horse who decided to get stuck up on it. That's right...Up. On. It. That was really good times.

Then there was the branch that fell on it during a wind storm and took out all of these lights...

And the fender that Sugar loved to chew on any time we left her tied for any length of time...

And Sugar's tie spot that she would immediately chew on when she was unloaded...

And the kick marks from my nice little mare any time a horse was loaded in behind her. Made it an interesting game since she was the only one that would haul quietly up front.

And the little tack room that held an amazing amount of crap in a reasonably organized fashion...

Though it may not sound like it, it really was a good little trailer for me for a long, long time. So many good memories with it...trail rides, a trip to the ocean, drill practices and meets, good times with friends and many, many opportunities that I wouldn't have had without it. It was a great little trailer!

But something tells me I'm not going to miss it too much...

Oh ya! Hello, new Logan!

A new toy

This year, because of our house, the boyfriend and I each ended up getting bigger tax refunds then we had been expecting. In our discussions of just what exactly we would do with that money we batted around ideas that ranged from saving every last penny of it, buying another horse, doing our arena or getting started on our barn and fencing to putting it towards house updating projects and all the other practical, but not all that fun things that are requiring our money and attention.

After much deliberation, we decided a practical, but fun use of the money was to put it towards tractor. It is fun because it's a big new toy, but also practical because with horses and raw property there are plenty of ways for it to make itself useful.

When we bought our house it came with almost 5 acres of mostly wooded land (see pic above). The whole perimeter of the property is fenced, but I wouldn't call it secure horse fencing by any stretch of the imagination. Even if it was at some point, it's old and posts are rotted and the only reason a lot of it is still standing is because it's being held up by the blackberry bushes that have taken it all over. I think the whole length of the perimeter is fenced with barbed wire. Then there is the not-horse-friendly, big square field fencing on part of it. Then there is the t-posts with two rows of 3 foot mesh fencing stacked for a 6 foot fence, held up by tposts for part of it. It's a bit ghetto, to say the least. Actually, it makes me laugh looking at it. It's just silly.

The property was mostly wooded when we got it but we changed that rather quickly and rather in a panic last summer. Since that initial clearing we haven't done a whole lot with it. We have an area cleared and mostly graded for our arena (see pic above), but it needs some cleaning up. The pasture needs lots of grading and we've decided there are a few more trees we would like to take out and lots of brush to clean up.

The pic above is how our property looks right now. If we can get the right implements for the tractor, I think we can make quick work of clearing fence lines and sinking fence posts. We did get the box scraper which is great for grading, so hopefully we can get the pastures cleaned up and seeded soon. I'm also hoping we can get the ground in the "arena" ready so we can bring in some sand soon. I'm excited because the tractor will help us turn the mess above into a picture perfect horse property. Or something. We've certainly got our work cut out for us, but I'm excited to see it all come together and hopefully that will happen much faster now!

My new toy!

I decided that I needed a new camera. Sort of like I needed those Steve Madden platform, peep toe, white patent leather 4" heels. Though I did get them on a clearance rack.

Ok, ok...maybe it was more want then need. But I wanted a new camera in a bad, bad way. I wasn't lucky enough to find the camera on a clearance rack, but I don't regret a penny that I spent on it. I've already gotten hours of entertainment out of it, which is more then I can say for the heels.

This is my new camera... I think it's kind of hot. For a camera. It's the Nikon Coolpix P80. It's got 18x optical zoom. That's going to be fun! It's got lots more dials and buttons and settings to screw with then my last camera. Don't get me wrong, I still love my old camera and it'll probably still get carted every where with me just because it's small and fits conveniently in my purse, but this new camera makes me drool.

There were quite a few reasons that I chose this particular camera. One, after my other camera, I love Nikon's. They are great and this one still felt very familiar to me even with all the cool new options. Two, PW, or rather one of PW's contributors Ivoryhut, inspired me with what can be done with an advanced point and shoot. Hers is a Canon, but this Nikon is basically the equivalent and I'm biased. I also think it's a great way to dip my toes into the great sea of photography without spending too much money or being overwhelmed. I really think playing with this camera will help me learn all about aperture, shutter speeds, exposure and all that other crap and then I can see if I want to spend the dough to step up into an SLR. I think this one should keep me busy for a little while atleast.

I've already taken almost 300 pictures just screwing around. Since the Christmas tree is the most interesting thing in my house at the moment (and I'm still having fun with macro) that is what you get.

And just in case you're curious (and because I need something other then the Christmas tree to take pics of)(and because they are very cute and fun but hell to wear, so I need to show them off some how) here is a pic of the heels...