Another sunny but lazy Sunday afternoon from Los Alamos, New Mexico. I spend most of my Sunday’s resting on the sofa, reading or cleaning up around the house. If the kids are here I find myself trying to entertain them, help with their homework. Then there are two trips to the stables to feed Ruby. But not this weekend. No kids. No Ruby. Sadly, Ruby is back at the vet after having survived another bout of colic.
The past few weeks have been rather hard on Ruby. Two bouts of colic (one before and one after the most recent snow), and a separate incident in the middle of our recent snowstorm recovering from stepping on a nail in her hoof. Coupled with the general summer of being injured and out of competition, the lack of eventing due to COVID, she has not had a strenuous workout since July. That has certainly taken a toll on my daughter because it was exercise and a distraction for her that she enjoyed and was good at it.
Colic is defined as any abdominal pain although horse owners typically refer to colic as problems with the gastrointestinal tract. Common causes of colic in horses include issues with diet, stress, changes in weather, sand digestion (caused by eating off the ground), or inadequate exercise, to name a few.
Her summer injury is due to arthritis and it has it’s own set of issues and complications. More to come in a future post I am sure. As for her condition at the moment, we expect that she will be home from the vet this Tuesday. I will be glad to see her.
As I said above, Sunday is also the day that I try to read. In general I try to up on things that are of interest to me. Books, news articles, internet web sites, even magazines. And that is what I have been doing for the past few hours before I started to write this post. As I had much to catch up on this week, between the election, and the happenings in the news, I can expect that I will probably ramble about all of that as I write this post.
As always, I find myself here on the sofa with my companion, Jewel. The picture below is how I started this post several hours ago. Several starts and stops to let her out, get her water, her desire to be a lap dog when she knows that she cannot be a lap dog.
I have the computer set up so that the TV is the monitor. This makes it great for downloading movies from internet sources, playing DVDs, or working on the computer itself. The large screen makes it easy to see what I am writing.
Here in New Mexico, the Governor has started another two week lock down of all things nonessential. Schools were trying to resume but now are retreating back to learning from home and on-line. I have concluded that there is no learning, there is only lots and lots of homework.
The other day I had to help son make a catapult. It was an assignment for his Makers Space class. After we fabricated it, we then had to shoot 10 different projectiles and record the distance. As a twist, I had him weigh the items, which comprised of 6 different rubber and plastic balls and then a penny, nickel, dime and a quarter.
He started with a few ideas from the internet as to how to construct the catapult. That had us run to the local hardware store for the supplies. For safety purposes, I used the table saw while son supervised fabrication of the catapult. It was actually a fun afternoon and diversion. For me, the diversion was from work. For him, the diversion was from video games and the opportunity to get his homework completed.
Anyway, the kids will continue on-line school and I will continue to work from home more days than I care to. The two week imposed lock down starts tomorrow, November 16 and is to last for two weeks, although it may be extended. We have seen a spike in cases since mid-September and are currently seeing over 1000 cases daily. This increase is causing strains on hospitals and other medical resources.
We have seen a similar uptick in cases at work. Recently over 500 people had to quarantine associated with contact tracing. A confirmed COVID-positive resulted from an individual who attended a Halloween party. There is also concern being raised because of the upcoming family celebrations associated with Thanksgiving and Christmas.
The experts suggest that the increase in COVID is the result of changing weather, which is resulting in more indoor activities due to the cold weather that is approaching. I think some of it is COVID fatigue. For the first time in over 7 months, I actually went out and had a beer. Although I must point out that I sat away from people and I was outside. It was good, albeit brief, to do something different for a change. I think the coworker who joined me also had a good time. Certainly was a stress reducer. Hopefully a vaccine will soon be available because our society cannot continue this way. People are suffering. People are hurting. I know that I need a change of pace.
Anyway, I was trying to spend today reading up on this latest phrase that I have seen in the news, daily readings on the internet, etc. Called the great reset, it sounds like some people want to use the pandemic to push through their own political agenda. My reading takes me immediately to the source, the world economic forum ( https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/ ). I immediately conclude that it comes from those who have different set of beliefs and agendas than I. To me, it is liberal. It is a mindset that is not to my liking, not consistent with my upbringing and beliefs. But I need to research it further and keep an open mind. A quick scan of the website causes me to venture across the subject of the 4th Industrial Revolution. I presume that this revolution covers the technological advances in computing and artificial intelligence to biotechnology and nanotechnology. I read that these technologies come with a potential to help us solve some of our most pressing global challenges. Somehow I recall reading about “The Third Wave” a number of years ago, and wonder if this too was another revolution where different technological advances shape our lives, the environment, how the world around us is interconnected and how we are to advance as a society.
Of late, I find my interests in reading are often derived from history to political science to economics. I visualize it as an interesting Venn diagram. A Venn diagram is a diagram that shows all possible logical relations between a finite collection of different sets. These diagrams depict elements as points in the plane, and sets as regions inside closed curves. I view this Venn diagram as having a cause and affect relationship where the size of the circles and the overlap changes as time marches forward, as technology advances. The sum total of the Venn diagram is what I believe describes the total human condition.
At any rate, lots to ponder with today’s ramblings. One thing that I have noticed is that I need to work on the format of my blog in order to make it more appealing to the reader. After all, this is an experiment of sorts for me as I ponder the next 50 plus years in terms of the direction of my life. Add that to my research over the next few months.
Much to research and read up on in order to figure out where they take me, or where I am heading. Until next time…
TheMcKeeSpot. 