This is how I felt today, too. I spent quite a while out with the ponies. I missed them this week. I haven't decided yet if I'll relocate Sunny up to Aberdeen or not. I'm leaning toward no. I'll be working a four day week once school starts this fall, and 10 hour days won't leave me much time for riding, especially once the days get shorter. And I'll be down here on the weekends unless the weather is really bad this winter. For now, I may just have to suffer through lack-of-horse until the weekends.

So the deal with the job is that it's a good one - nice people to work with, flexible job description that matches my skill set and is going to be challenging enough to keep me on my toes - right up my alley. The snag? It's 2 1/2 hours away from home. Too far to drive daily, so I now have a cute little apartment about 5 blocks from work.... Not ideal, but with the economy the way it is, I'm lucky to have found something so quickly and so (relatively speaking) close to home.

My first week was... long? The first few days were paperwork, annoyingly tedious and frustrating. Insurance, proof of citizenship, check the boxes, fill in the SS#s... Bleh. But Monday they'll actually come configure my computer, and I'm starting to get the hang of things otherwise. I have files to sort through and lots of manuals to read. Fun, fun, fun - and I'm not being entirely sarcastic there. I'm not the only new person, so there's lots of change coming, and I get to be part of it.

But enough about work. In the also-good news column, if I do decide to show at the SD State Fair this year, I have the week off. So now I just have to decide if the weekends between now and then give us enough time to get ready.

Rufus - somebody asked Rufus.
Yes, our horse family has grown to 3. The newly christened four-footed critter above now belongs to T. Rufus is currently staying with our friends the vets, as they a) volunteered, b) have the room and c) we were reluctant to introduce another gelding into the mixed herd at the farm at present for several reasons. T and J the vet will be riding together in my absence, so that works out very well.

Rufus has thus far proven himself to a nice steady boy. He's at least part Arab, although we don't know much about his history. What is quite obvious is that he's been handled a ton. And T's quite taken with him. So now we can ride together, although we're going to have to track down a saddle that fits both T and Rufus a bit better fairly soon.