Category: journal

Having a Baby!?

Laura Highcove

So I have entered into a deal with Deb, the owner of the barn where I work, with one of her mares, a golden palomino with a blanket called Nez Tea. I am going to pay for all of the breeding costs for getting Nezi pregnant, and the resulting baby will be mine to do with as I please. Then next year I’ll pay to breed Nezi again and the resulting baby will be Deb’s. This allows me to “lease” a mare to breed without having to pay all of the board and care costs of the mare since I don’t want to use my mare yet since I’m still using her to learn to ride.

Nezi was not under lights, so it was only about the beginning of last week that her uterus started waking up. The vets said we should check her again Monday (yesterday). Well Friday afternoon she was very clearly showing us that she was in heat. Unfortunately it was already too late to order semen that day and Char-o-lot doesn’t collect on weekends, so I prepared to miss her while we waited for Monday.

Monday morning came and the vets checked her to find three follicles on her left ovary, the largest of which was a 41. On their recommendation, I ordered semen and gave her a shot of HCG. The semen arrived today just after lunch. The busy vets were only able to get out to the farm by 3:30 and the 41 follicle was rather predictably gone.

The vets put in all of the semen we had received since Nezi had already ovulated hoping to catch the recently released egg or one of the still growing follicles will ovulate in the next 36 hours with the HCG shot.

In one way it’s nice because it saves me from having to pay the vets to come again tomorrow to put in a second dose and/or check for ovulation. On the other hand it makes me nervous that she just won’t get pregnant and we’ll have to try again. It really does make a difference knowing it’s my money that will have to pay for a recollection, but I really didn’t want to go much longer. I would certainly love to get her pregnant now as the beginning of March is a good time for babies to be born…you know. Right near/on my birthday.

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And yes, I didn’t really explain what the heck I’m talking about, but this is more of a record for me than anything. Though if anyone shows interest I’m more than happy to explain more about what goes on in trying to get a mare pregnant.

Horses

Laura Highcove

So we’ve had two foals born at the barn in the past month. The first was from Drifterella, who had her filly two and a half weeks early, though luckily she was just fine if not a might small. She’s a solid chestnut even though her mother is (minimally) colored. The second was out of She’s Cool Lukin, a rather colored mare, but ended up being another solid chestnut, though a colt. I should put up some pictures. Babies are cute.

We’re waiting on Diamond to foal hers in about two weeks. Hopefully she has a colored foal…

Left Behind

Laura Highcove

So I did something hard. I finally decided to quit raiding. It’s been four years, but raiding on Tuesdays was just killing me. When you get into a certain schedule and do it for four years, you get *used* to how things are. Before raiding ushered me out of my week, now it feels more like a roadblock as I come into a new week. Maybe it’s a weak excuse, but having everything crammed onto three days and then having my entire weekend just open really doesn’t work for me. I need ‘me’ time every day, time to work on my other hobbies and interests. I was spending quality time with my husband last night when I looked up at the clock and realized it was 7:30 and for a few moments all I thought was ‘I could get on. Look, it’s raid time and I’m just watching TV.’ but then I would be raiding, and unable to do anything else until 11 when it’s time to go to bed, at which time I would probably have to just leave raid because Koi’s been pushing past 11 *every* raid since we started in Cataclysm and I’m tired enough already without getting to bed late on top of it.

But whenever I think of raiding, I feel regretful because it’s a whole world that I’m feel like I’m losing. I have friends in the game and if I don’t raid, then we have no interaction. I could raid Wednesdays and Thursdays still, Wednesday might be pushing it, but then at least I could keep my schedule for Tuesdays. I went to Guild Ox this morning and realized that I wasn’t there for a single guild new kill, even when I was raiding because everything happened after I had to go to bed for the night or before we started raiding officially and I was doing other things, or after I stopped raiding. I’ve already been left behind and maybe it’s better to just stay that way.

But the time I would gain by no longer raiding, while hard to see right now. When you don’t have anything else to do, that’s when I could write, when I could play other video games that are piling up. It’s really a hard decision and I’m just not sure how things are going to go from here.

NaNo and beyond

Laura Highcove

Once again I have managed to be NaNotorious.

It was harder this year, for sure, since I had a full time job. Week three was the worst, I really wanted to just give up and get on with…well not doing this. But I managed to stick it out. Once again the book is not finished. I think I’m further through the book than the halfway of last year, but once again, we’ll see how that goes. I, of course, celebrated by starting work on my other book, The Trickster.

That being said, we’re less than a week away from Wow’s Cataclysm launch which will consume my soul for at least a month before I come up for air. Looking forward to the days off if nothing else. Though with the time, I really should get the ‘credits’ thing done to try and encourage other people to make their own so I can get that done before Cata launches.

There’s also the pesky issue of my lost SoulSilver game, and with it all of the Pokemon I have collected over the past, roughly three years. I have reached the last gym of the Diamond version of the game (which I hate as a game, but made better by sending over eggs from my husband’s Heart Gold game for a familiar team) and am playing with getting White when it comes out in March. However last night I looked over the pictures of the pokemon from Gen V and am sadly (but expectantly) disappointed by the horrible designs in most every respect. Most of my problem being that a lot of the pokemon don’t *look* like pokemon. The style seems incorrect. The starters are fine along with a few random pokes, but even the legendary dragons don’t really fit the style of pokemon designs I’m used to. I still desperately cling to the original 151 with some passion, with only tiny cracks for some pokemon from the later releases. By the time they hit Diamond’s pokemon, I was thoroughly disgusted, and think I hold no love for any of those pokemon (I’d have to check to be positive.)

So what is the point of going into Gen V? The possibility of at least good gameplay. I did not dislike Diamond only because of the unfamiliar, unimagined pokemon, but because the gameplay itself was terrible as they took a Game Boy game and spent five minutes making it DS compatible. (I also didn’t like it because of the storyline. While Team Galactic was cool for once again having a PLAN, the idea of being able to put the world’s creator in a ball in my pocket really pushes past even the suspension of disbelief one must have for being able to put something the size of Onix in a ball in my pocket.) SoulSilver was everything that I could possibly want in a game. All of the pokemon. A huge world. Fabulous gameplay and an actual (fabulous) use of the ds screen. In my mind they improved the game in almost every way. (Even the pokewalker was so cool.) So I’m hoping that Black and White will be worth it. If not, I suppose I’ll get another SoulSilver game at some point and complete my Gen IV collection and be happy with that.

Holidays

Laura Highcove

I think I should be able to say Merry Christmas without fear of persecution. Sure, radio stations, and TV stations, and TV programs, stick with Happy Holidays as they generally represent a number of people with a number of religious beliefs, but *I* have my own religious belief, and that is in Chritsmas.

I don’t believe that wishing someone a Merry Christmas is offensive. It’s not me shoving my religion down your throat. It’s me saying this is my religion, I wish you well. I would not be offended to be wished a Happy Hanukkah or a Happy Kwanzaa (Kwanzaa isn’t even a religious holiday…). It just seems these days that people are so scared to offend people because there are some idiots out there who go out of their way to be offended by everything they possibly can.

I saw a full rainbow

Laura Highcove

NaNoWriMo has started and it’s going okay except for the one hiccup where I thought my only file of my story got corrupted, and yesterday’s late raid which made me so tired that I’m napping instead of writing. But then I should’ve have any trouble catching up this weekend. Of course I need to get ahead since next weekend I have to go family visiting.

Blah, it’s so cold out today. About time to pull out the heavy layers so as to stay warm in the barn. All the horses are getting frisky in the cold and of course there’s the lazy sleepy feeling cold weather brings in general.

And tonight should be our Heroic Lich King kill assuming we get the numbers. Hopefully with how well we did last night, people will be excited and come tonight as well.

Cold weather

Laura Highcove

What are you doing?
Putting mayo on a horse. What are you doing?

Life continues on. The days do seem to be cooling down a bit. It’s almost chilly in the mornings. Before 8. Almost nice. I’m ready for cold weather again. It would be nice if it wasn’t 14 degrees again like last winter, but I’d rather that than 95.