Good times last night! Rounded up a group of friends, and did a tailgate thing at the local Dixie Speedway, in Woodstock, GA. Great food, plenty of refreshing beverages, fireworks, and dirt-oval racing on the claybanks - Southern Style!! (More pics on Flickr)
... since I added any random useless updates. As in, erm, a year?! Do you ever let things go SO long, that you no longer even know where to start?? Yes - that would be me, too!
So.. since that last post ages ago... we've had a couple more fosters find good homes - one of whom comes back to visit, since he lives with friends of ours. And each time he comes to visit, we realize how lucky we are to have OUR dogs, who are basically GOOD. We've added two more horses - who's primary purpose is supposed to be that they work for their kibbles as lesson horses. Sometimes it even actually works out that way. We're slowly slowly slowly working on the Farmette and building (hillbilly) Horse Habitats. My IT consulting contract with an unnamed-internet-auction giant ended last December, and I've been happily acquiring quite lovely clients with various web dev / internet marketing needs ever since, for which I am incredibly grateful!
Have had several good motorcycle trips, the longest of which involved a week or so up in WA / ID / MT and included
attending Evel Knievel Days in Butte, MT - which I'm glad we made, since it was Evel's last one. Have done a couple of trips to Deal's Gap - home of "The Dragon" and ample contenders for Darwin Awards. One was for the 2nd Annual Women's Sportbike Rally, and the other was to meet up w/ my friend Brad, who was on an around-the-US motorcycle trip (he blogs about that here).
And most recently a tornado ungraciously ripped through our neighborhood - and while only a puny one, an EF-1, which I guess means the winds were only ~95-110mph? - we lost many, many trees, we had ridiculous flooding and hail along with it, both our house and garage now need to be re-roofed, and we had silt, leaves, limbs, trees, and crud everywhere, and it melted the new riding arena which had only JUST been finished. The sheer manual labor of the cleanup has been a little daunting, I'll admit. Once we get all the Horse Habitats and paddocks built, we'll see where we might be able to plant some new trees. And with all that, we were very, very fortunate - we still HAVE our house, while many folks nearby are living in temporary accommodations, and everyone was OK.
Beyond that synopsis, I may even try to catch this sucker up, and expand with some highlights.
Before another year goes by.
Maybe.
And with that, hope all the neighborhood folks are moving into summer in good form. Cheers!
Things are nuts right now - I started doing tech consulting again long-distance and full-time, am teaching riding 1 full day and three part days a week, and still working on our side business, well - on the side. And working on sprucing up the landscaping and doing a crapload of project around the house & outside, as we're hosting a 40-person wedding this coming weekend.
My poor horse hasn't been ridden in ages... by the time I finally get off my duff and get him back in to work, it'll be like starting completely over for the BOTH of us...
And we haven't had time yet to take in another foster - I don't think it would be fair until we get the wedding over and done with. There's another Lab I want to foster if he hasn't found a place yet once we're past the wedding - he has a very sad, sad story.
My guy rocks in general, and I feel lucky that we have each other on a daily basis as it is. But every so often he REALLY outdoes himself - such as this Valentine's Day.
I mean, what girl wouldn't be completely and utterly stoked over getting a sportbike for heart's day? :-) I don't know what I did to deserve him, but whatever it was, I'm glad I did it.
He would be the best anyway, but this just makes it extra fun!!
Vegas, the yellow lab puppy we took in as a foster on Jan. 6th, got picked up by his new dad Tuesday night. He is such a sweet boy - I hope his new home works out really well for him! I liked his new "dad" - and he'll be the only dog, which I think is good, as Vegas still seems to be making up for a lot of missed love!
Here's a pic of our lazy Lab Bruno and Vegas not long after he arrived:
I just read that they had to euthanize Barbaro. Sad - after all the effort put forth to try to get him to a point where he could live a comfortable life (and breed million dollar babies...). R.I.P. He was definitely quite a horse....
Link to article: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/29/sports/barbaro.php
No, not that kind!! Vegas the Foster Lab.
Something possessed us to become volunteer foster dog parents... and now we have a Lab puppy here at home driving us nuts. Meet Vegas! You can learn more about him, and other foster labs in N. Georgia here: http://www.labradorfriends.com/ This group works hard to re-home wonderful Labs who've fallen upon sad times. Who could abandon a Lab, of all dogs? I've been in that tough spot earlier in my life where I've had to find a new home for a dog, but that's what I worked hard to do - find them a new home. So, now that I'm finally in a much better place in my own life - I can offer a Labrador Halfway House... :-)
The classic styling of an old-school sport standard, mixed with modern technology. Mmmmmmm - tasty!!! (Not that diagonal frame flex isn't uber fun on the old bikes when you're trying to rail on them, mind you.... ;-) ).
I wonder if the factory would take my 78 GS750E for one of the new Commandos straight across?? If I asked nice? Maybe?? I'm not sure if I'm feeling the love for the gold forks and rear shocks, tho.... I think a chrome front-end / black outboard springs would be good.
Still.... I'd let the new Commando come sleep in my garage ANY time! (Or even in the house where half the other bikes are at the moment....)

mmm i see what you mean. prob not the best time to consider the meaning of life. lol. At least... read more
on QotD: Procrastinating...