Christmas Holidays
I had a great Christmas break this year(s). On Boxing Day/Dec 26th I drove to Albany to spend some time with bardiegrub and shortblack while they were there. We stayed with bardiegrub's brother, who'd cooked a turducken for Christmas and needed help with the leftovers! I managed not to say anything weirdly fannish about it to him, but was delighted by the unexpected Supernatural reference.
They showed me some of the sights around town like the wind farm which supplies 75% of Albany's energy. (At least that's the official story - I think these could be alien invaders plotting world domination.)
and the ANZAC memorial lookout
I also visited the Gap and Natural Bridge:
and the whaling museum (whaling ceased in 1978). I learned that humpback whales mate for life and if the female is killed, the male will stay with her and be killed also. However if the crew makes a mistake and kills the male first, the female has much more eye on survival and will take off. This is a skeleton of a pygmy blue whale that washed up on the beach:
On the way home I stopped at Porongorup National Park. The one thing I most want in a holiday destination is a forest with ferns! I did what started out as a nice cool walk in the shade and quickly turned into a slog across a ridge of rocks in the hottest part of the day, but compared to Perth it still wasn't that hot.
Low spot
High spot
After getting home I hooked the horse float up to the car and have since taken App somewhere new to ride every day. It's great to have a change from going down my own road every time and a luxury to have the float ready to go each morning. All I have to do is grab the horse out of the paddock, point him at the ramp and off we go. Yesterday and today I drove to a friend's property and we took two different rides from her place. She's training for a 160km endurance ride, so App and I have to motor right along to keep up. Our normal cruising pace is about 14km/hr and hers is up to 22km/hr. Like most horses App absolutely hates to be left behind and will do whatever he must to avoid it, but he has to work pretty hard at it!
After a 2 hour ride today. Not the greatest photos, but at least they record his current size! My goal is to not let him get any bigger during the year, which will be a real challenge in the spring. He actually doesn't look too bad at the moment. He hasn't had a mouthful of feed except for the grass here since July, and the grass has been dried off since the start of November, but he's definitely not in any danger of wasting away.
My friend is on tank water, so the horse had to wait until we got home to be hosed off.
Clean again at home, but on a mission:
Mission accomplished. Fortunately once he's dry most of the dirt just falls off and you can see his pattern again.
I barely scraped the surface of Yuletide this year in favour of spn_j2_xmas and other general catch-up SPN reading, but really enjoyed my usual "reading holiday". My favourite story of the week might be When It Happens (Sam/Dean) by checkthemargins or perhaps Wild Hamsters by the same author (I have no clue about the hamster part, but will happily deal with hamsters to get Sam's speech to Dean at the end!).
Back to work tomorrow! New Supernatural this week! Happy 2012!
They showed me some of the sights around town like the wind farm which supplies 75% of Albany's energy. (At least that's the official story - I think these could be alien invaders plotting world domination.)
and the ANZAC memorial lookout
I also visited the Gap and Natural Bridge:
and the whaling museum (whaling ceased in 1978). I learned that humpback whales mate for life and if the female is killed, the male will stay with her and be killed also. However if the crew makes a mistake and kills the male first, the female has much more eye on survival and will take off. This is a skeleton of a pygmy blue whale that washed up on the beach:
On the way home I stopped at Porongorup National Park. The one thing I most want in a holiday destination is a forest with ferns! I did what started out as a nice cool walk in the shade and quickly turned into a slog across a ridge of rocks in the hottest part of the day, but compared to Perth it still wasn't that hot.
Low spot
High spot
After getting home I hooked the horse float up to the car and have since taken App somewhere new to ride every day. It's great to have a change from going down my own road every time and a luxury to have the float ready to go each morning. All I have to do is grab the horse out of the paddock, point him at the ramp and off we go. Yesterday and today I drove to a friend's property and we took two different rides from her place. She's training for a 160km endurance ride, so App and I have to motor right along to keep up. Our normal cruising pace is about 14km/hr and hers is up to 22km/hr. Like most horses App absolutely hates to be left behind and will do whatever he must to avoid it, but he has to work pretty hard at it!
After a 2 hour ride today. Not the greatest photos, but at least they record his current size! My goal is to not let him get any bigger during the year, which will be a real challenge in the spring. He actually doesn't look too bad at the moment. He hasn't had a mouthful of feed except for the grass here since July, and the grass has been dried off since the start of November, but he's definitely not in any danger of wasting away.
My friend is on tank water, so the horse had to wait until we got home to be hosed off.
Clean again at home, but on a mission:
Mission accomplished. Fortunately once he's dry most of the dirt just falls off and you can see his pattern again.
I barely scraped the surface of Yuletide this year in favour of spn_j2_xmas and other general catch-up SPN reading, but really enjoyed my usual "reading holiday". My favourite story of the week might be When It Happens (Sam/Dean) by checkthemargins or perhaps Wild Hamsters by the same author (I have no clue about the hamster part, but will happily deal with hamsters to get Sam's speech to Dean at the end!).
Back to work tomorrow! New Supernatural this week! Happy 2012!