TGIF (almost)

It's been a week. Not that anything has happened even worth writing about, it's just been a week. And for the last two days you have gotten words and not pictures (well except the award).

So tonight you get some pictures of one of my favorite things: the Arizona sunset!

OK so I lied - these last two are sunRISE:

I've Been Tagged!

I've been tagged by Mikey, The Horsehoeing Housewife. Thanks, now I don't have to think up a blog for the day LOL.

Ok 7 things you don't know about me:

1. My first husband and I tried sneaking him into the drive-in, in the trunk of the car, when we were poor and pregnant. Surprisingly enough the ticket taker didn't fall for a pregnant woman coming to the drive-in alone... and we were caught. Talk about humiliating... HIS idea though!!!

2. I have 4 tattoos. I will show you 3 of them right now. Once I lose the extra 40 or so pounds I am carrying I would not mind showing you the 4th one. LOL. I would like to get at least 3 more...

3. I am pierced besides my ears. Nuff said - don't even ask! 2 of my daughters could say the same...

4. I did not get my first horse until I was 35 1/2 years old. And now I cannot fathom EVER being without at least a couple minis... I will have to live with one of my kids, they cannot put me in a nursing home with no equines!

5. My middle name is Caryl, after one of my mom's high school buds. My first name is supposedly my dad's first girlfriend (3rd grade) and if I were my mom that would NOT be my name! My whole name including all last names I have ever had is:
Susan Caryl Lethem Iverson Porubovich Meyer Morgan. I have only been married 3 times though. You will have to figure out the extra name on your own! However I will now be Susan Morgan until I die!!!!

6. I like my feet. Lots of feet in this world are ugly, but not mine. I think they are quite pretty - as feet go, that is!

7. I was born at St. Joseph's Hospital, Phoenix, Arizona, and except for 3 miserable years in California I have lived in the Valley of the Sun my entire life.

OK that's it for me. I tag:

Carroll Farm

and

Life's Funny Like That.

(Sorry I don't know how to do the links like Mikey did {eyes rolling} - I'm just a beginner blogger!

Does This Mean I Am Famous?

Look what I got from Mikey (The Horseshoeing Housewife):

Actually she gave it to several bloggers so maybe I'm not that great after all, but as much time as I have spent coming up with, preparing, and editing blogs the last few weeks, hey, I'll take the award!

Woo Hoo! Thanks Mikey!

And what else happened is, among others she gave it to was Carroll Farm which I hadn't seen yet, so I went over there to read, scrolling down reading stories and lo and behold, there is a picture of someone I think I recognize!

So I called my daughter:

Me: Is the guy who you have been riding horses for, named Josh?

Hilary: Yes.

Me: And does he have 5 kids?

Hilary: Yes.

Small world huh? And I had to laugh at their rain residual pictures, looked a lot like mine! So they are now on my links list as well... being neighbors, it seemed the neighborly thing to do!

Yikes! Where's My Rainbow???

Good grief. Yes we need the rain, we need it badly. But getting so much in one day, it just runs off rather than soaking in (although as we are also sinking in inches deep mud it doesn't seem like it!)

It's much worse in other places I know, but I almost feel like I should be building an Ark. Instead of 2 of each animal, though, I'm going to fill it with donkeys, mules, horses and dogs!

It rained here basically all day yesterday. ALL DAY. I kept checking to see if it would stop so I could go out and get to work on drainage... but almost every time I looked out the front door, I could see the raindrops on the fish pond. We did get one 20-minute break and quickly cleared out the drainage ditches in the worst areas, but pretty quick it started pouring again. When it rains this much, it really doesn't matter that they have covers. Everybody is wet and muddy and unhappy...

This is the view to the north, out the front gate, from the west end of our house. Yup that's my driveway, under all that water. And since we HAVE to drive through it to get in and out, that means lots more ruts - oh joy!

This is part of the back porch and our work/project area. Guess we will not be doing anything there until the water soaks in!
SOME of the dogs actually come off the porch to see what I am doing out here. Behind the house is a section that is high ground, but obviously it has a low spot in the middle as you can see behind Tank, who is looking at me like "what the heck are you taking pictures of"!

Water also runs from behind the house toward the southeast and right into the "garden" where there are 3 mini pens, including the foaling pen. We call it the garden because the lady who owned this place before us actually had a garden in this area. I don't have a green thumb so we put pens in it!
Mary Ellen and Ellie Mae in their lake... and this is WITH drainage ditches!
This is about halfway back on the property, the water comes from the northwest corner and runs down our "road", turning in front of the hay barn and heading east at that point.
Then it turns south again and goes on past the tractor shed... to where Trooper and Fred live... where apparently there is a BIG low spot {sigh}
I didn't even get any further than that, it started to rain again and I had to get the camera back in the house. The rest of the mini pens and the big horse pens are full of huge puddles...

And my brilliant 16-year-old put the rubber boots away the last time it rained. Right under the overhang of the house roof. So look what I found:

Yup that's rain water, INSIDE the boots, almost up to the top. That's my girl!

Supposed to rain again tonight, Wednesday and next Sunday... can I get internet on the Ark???

Rain Rain Go Away

Don't get me wrong, I love rain. And God knows we need it badly. But hey, how about a little at a time, and not all at once? It took me twice as long as normal to feed this morning, slogging around in my rubber boots... and nobody out there is happy today. Despite covers, they still get wet. And the way the water runs over the land, even under the covers everything turns to mud, if not puddles, if not LAKES.

So I don't dare take the camera outside, wouldn't want to risk it getting wet. But we had a similar storm last fall and once the rain quit dropping from the sky I went out with the camera:

General yard (lake) pictures:




It didn't show up very well in the picture, but there was even a puddle in the salt lick:

Holly:


Donkeys do NOT like to be wet. Here we have some very unhappy donkeys.







But as you can see their nappy hair keeps them dry underneath, so it's not as bad as they would have you believe!

Mules don't like to get wet either. Check out Annabelle's expression LOL:

Eve decided she'd like to be brown mule instead of a white one (and don't ask me how Jasmine stayed so dry, I have NO CLUE!)


Destiny also trying to change color:

Saturday Soapbox: A Computer Virus

Not that writing this will change anything as far as people creating viruses, but I want to say it anyway, in case the hints below save someone else from a disaster like mine. I have been using a lot of "previous" pictures for this blog, and it is a constant reminder of my loss.

Since I got my first digital camera, we have updated cameras, computers and programs multiple times. In fact right now I have 4 different places on my computer that I can - have to - go to get pictures... someday I will figure out a picture program I really like and move them all to one place. But that's a little scary for me.

About 3 years ago my computer got a virus. At that time I had 2 Kodak programs, the old and the new. The new program had ALL of my first pictures of our minis... ALL of my baby pictures of Justice and Impatiens... and ALL of our rescue pictures for the first few years of rescue, including ALL of Wilbur's pictures. We sent the computer to be fixed and requested that all pictures be put on disk before work was begun. Well, the guy forgot to do that, and when he wiped out the virus, it took with it my new Kodak program, and all my pictures. Thankfully a couple of people I had sent pictures to, ironically both named Carol, had not erased them from their own computers:

and my mom had printed out some that I had sent to her, which we then scanned back in, so I did manage to salvage a small percentage, although the quality of the scanned photos is not near what it was:




It still hurts. Justice got sick and died at 2 1/2 years old - he's gone and I don't even have very many pictures of him. We weren't able to save Wilbur - he's gone and the only pictures I have of him are the ones I had put on the website. For all the rescues that were adopted out, I have one picture of each from the adopted page and that's it, the rest are gone. And lots of other things from the rest of our life those few years, all gone.

So, a couple of years ago I got this e-mail and from time to time I send it out. The information is good and there are still a lot of people out there that don't know it and don't do it. If sharing it causes even one person to follow the simple steps, and avoids one other person getting a virus and losing something important, it's worth it!

Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail?

Do you hate it?

Every time you forward an e-mail there is information left over from the peoplewho got the message before you, namely their e-mail addresses & names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every e-mail address that has come across his computer. Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit.

That's right, all of that inconvenience over a nickel!

How do you stop it? Well, there are two easy steps:

(1) When you forward an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses thatappear in the body of the message (at the top). That's right, DELETE them. Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you know how to do. It only takes a second. You MUST click the "Forward" button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message. If you don't click on "Forward" first, you won't be able to edit the message at all.

(2) Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use the To: or Cc: columns for adding e-mail address. Always use the Bcc: (blind carbon copy) column for listing the e-mail addresses. This is the way that people you send to only see their own e-mail address. If you don't see your Bcc: option click on where it says To: and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and choose Bcc: and that's it, it's that easy. When you send to Bcc: your message will automatically say "Undisclosed Recipients in the "TO:" field of the people who receive it.

So please, in the future, when you go to forward something, remember my lost pictures... Let's stop the junk mail - and the viruses.